I am encouraged that doctors and health professionals will have a part in the decision-making process concerning what to do. It is not totally clear to me, however, what part law enforcement will play in what seems to me the concern of the medical community, especially those who have studied addiction and the problems incurred there.
I hope cool heads will prevail. More often than not, it seems, what really happens in these attempts to attack the problem is that people who genuinely need painkillers are denied them while we try to “help” those abusing them.
Worse than that, I can remember long hours of sitting with my father years ago while he suffered the agonies of bone cancer, not finding out until after he died that he was under-prescribed painkillers because of a doctor’s fear of losing his license and practice during one of these “drug abuse crackdowns.”
I look at it this way: why not make sure that health professionals be allowed to handle this using their own good judgement, without fear of reprisal? Those that suffer should be afforded mercy, even though some who abuse drugs (oh yes, I have seen how everybody seems to care about them) might get by with it.
Charlie Beebe, Missoula
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