cannabisnews.com: 'Drug War' in the U.S. a Bitter Pill for Elderly!





'Drug War' in the U.S. a Bitter Pill for Elderly!
Posted by FoM on July 13, 1999 at 12:32:30 PT
By Jan Glidewell
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Ain't government fun? We had a rally July 4 in Zephyrhills presenting the views of those who want a drug made legal so they can buy it.
Recently we had a Citrus County man interviewed on World News Tonight about drugs that are legal, only he can't get them without sacrificing other important parts of his life. In this wealthiest of nations, we have old people who regularly choose between needed medications and food. That is disgraceful. In fact, I'll bet if we took some of that money the government uses hunting down bales of marijuana, and some of the cash flow that is created by the government keeping so-called recreational drugs hard to get and therefore expensive, we could more adequately medicate our elderly and disabled against the ravages of age and illness. I looked at the mass of pill bottles on my own bathroom counter the other day in dismay. I am a relatively healthy man, but must take at least three medications regularly to maintain that health. Five others I must take on an intermittent basis. My guess is that the whole bunch, uninsured, would cost me a few hundred a month. For right now I have insurance -- from a company that increasingly involves itself in my medical care, deciding to substitute medications for those ordered by my physician and, my favorite, deciding how many times I should have sex per week. (Once. Some company, huh?) They also decided that, although their policy is that I don't have to pay for drugs that I receive in a doctor's office, that I did have to pay, and haven't yet explained to my satisfaction why that is. And, of late, we have seen growing concern about offshore pharmacies providing what the drug companies and medical societies assure us are inferior services and products through the Internet. They may well be, but if there wasn't a market those companies wouldn't be there, and if there wasn't a need, there wouldn't be a market. In these days it is not unusual for a person to be taking more than a dozen medications. A friend of mine with AIDS takes 35. If you've ever had to go "out of plan" to buy a medication, and I have, you know how devastating that can be. I hope I don't have a personal stake in making prescription drugs part of Medicare. I plan on keeping my insurance (for all that I complain about it) and I have some options as a veteran that many elderly people do not. Maybe we could just skip the next undeclared war against some country the size of Polk County, which after a few weeks, both sides will declare themselves to have won, and use all that smart bomb money to defend against cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimers -- killers that make Milosevic and Hussein look like pikers. Part of the problem is, I think, that we are on a rudderless ship. Old Didn't Inhale is floating the prescription balloon . . . while his so called opposition on the right is hastily inflating the Ten Commandments and Flag Burning balloons -- to make sure that they create a lot of heat and flame and, as usual, no substance. As I recall, it was the Clinton administration, through Hillary "I Love New York" Clinton, that proposed universal health care. As I recall, it was the Republican Congress, and the American Medical Association and a lot of other people getting fat the way things are, that said we didn't need the Clinton plan and that they would be right back -- seven years ago -- with their own. Finally they decided that no plan was ever really needed and it was all a creation of Hillary and the demon media. Will you guys please stop trying to regulate what makes people feel good; give people access to what will stop making them feel bad and once, just this once, do the jobs we were dumb enough to think you would do when you promised us you would? Thanks. 
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