War on Drugs, Problems and Solutions

The War on Drugs
Problems and Resolutions
Dexter Gilbert

The Problem

Without arguing the fact that drugs are an ongoing problem in our society, this is an attempt to expose the absolute futility of the current approach to resolving the problem of drug use and addiction in our society. This is not meant to be a tool for partisan politics, yet if ever published, I am sure there are many that will attempt to use it as such. My true intention is to expose the fact that the current approach to drug policies in the United States is creating more problems than they are solving. I will attempt to spark a conversation rather than a heated debate on the issues at hand. These issues can be outlined with one simple question. Which is worse, drugs or “The War on Drugs”?

I have had many jobs in my life, none of them being extremely prosperous, yet some paying more than others. A few of these jobs actually had medical insurance. I am now self employed and uninsured. In my business, I attempted to provide medical insurance for myself and my small staff. This was soon halted when it became obvious that my small business could not afford this expenditure. Reluctantly, I dropped the medical insurance for myself and my employees and purchased a private health plan. As we all know, the cost of medical insurance is on the rise and I found my insurance premium started looking more like a property payment. As businesspeople we often have to make decisions that are risky, and with my good health at the time, I considered dropping the expense of my health insurance to be not such a big risk. I was wrong.
Approximately six months after I dropped my medical insurance, I was at my cabin working on my floating boat dock. I had a new boat slip built and had tied my old 20’ X 20’ flat dock to the new slip. I put a canopy for shade and shelter on the flat dock and boat wakes were causing the pole on the canopy roof to clamor against the roof of my newly build boat slip. This was going to scratch the coating on my metal roof. I couldn’t have that, yet I did not have a ladder to reach the canopy top. In a moment of what I thought was one of enlightened ingenuity, I figured that I could cut a foam beer can koozie and tie it around the pole to pad it so my new slip would be protected, but I had one problem. I did not have a proper ladder with me at the cabin to reach the roof of the boat dock. So I came up with another brilliant idea. What about the dock ladder? You know the ladder we use for swimming, to get in and out of the water. We only kept in the water when we used it. It is quite portable, yet not so functional for the task at hand, and my ever so precious dock roof was at risk. Just like dropping my medical insurance, I decided to take another risk.
The ladder seemed to be fairly sturdy when I propped it up against the steal pole on the new boat slip, so I decided as long as my wife was holding the ladder, it would be fairly safe, after all, it wasn’t that high. So I cut and prepared my beer koozie and had my wife hold the ladder, without giving her any instructions as to how to do so. Subsequently, she held it with her hand in about the middle of the ladder rather than putting her feet at the base where it was apt to slip outward. I climbed into position and found that to reach my target, I had to reach and lean somewhat to the left and up high, yet it seemed doable. So I reached, the bottom of the ladder slipped and I found myself lying on the wooden dock in extreme pain. I had fell head first and landed on my right shoulder.
I have never been one to frequent doctors, and without medical insurance, you want to try to tough out minor injuries without the aid of a medical professional. The time of my accident was right at dusk on a Friday evening in June. I was in pretty bad pain so I made my way up the hill to the cabin from the lake and took some headache powders for the pain. I don’t bruise easily so there was no external injury other than a minor scrape on my arm from the fall, but the pain made it all too obvious that I injured myself and had done quite a good job of it. By around 1:30 AM, it was apparent the pain was not going to subside, and if for no other reason, I had to go to the local hospital emergency room to get something to ease the pain at the very least. At this time I asked my wife to drive me to the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital, probably after 2:00 AM. There was very little going on in the emergency room when we got there. I was the only person waiting. Meanwhile, I saw one patient come out of the treatment area, so I assumed that was the only other customer at that time of the morning. I believe that assumption to be correct.
I initially reported in where they of course wanted insurance information. I stated that I was uninsured. Well now it was time to wait. It was after 3:00 AM when I was taken back for my initial interview. There they check your body temperature, blood pressure and ask questions off of a preprinted form concerning your medical condition. One of the questions was to rate the severity of your pain on a scale of one to ten. Difficult question when I knew that I was in more intense and constant pain than I had ever been in, but I am sure there are conditions much worse than mine that would constitute the worst pain being a ten on the scale. I answered eight. In retrospect, I should have answered fifteen.
Now that this part of my visit to the emergency room was completed, it was time to wait again. Not so bad, about twenty more minutes of waiting and I was called back to the examining room. Not long after I entered the emergency room the doctor came in to examine me and I began to answer his questions concerning my injury. Just as his questioning started, a female medical professional entered. What her title was I am not sure, but she seemed to be wearing a nurses whites. She had some questions for me.
Her questions were not related to my injury though. In an interrogational manner, she asked me if I knew a certain doctor in my hometown. She stated that they were suspicious of me because I was from a town more than an hour away and at their emergency room in the middle of the night. Well I explained that the injury occurred at my cabin on the local lake. At that time it was apparent to me that I had been a subject of conversation during my substantial waiting period to receive emergency medical treatment. Knowing the current problems with prescription painkillers in our society, it was all too obvious the reason why, so I did not take too much offense to this at the time. They were just trying to make sure that I was not an uninsured patient whom they would never receive compensation from. Was I a patient scrupulously trying to obtain painkillers in order to support a drug habit? Surely such precautions are necessary. So I said nothing.
I was sent across the hall for an x-ray. The technician was real nice and I was sure there would be an obvious problem that would show up in the x-rays. She took two x-rays, one front view and one right side view, and I returned to the examining room. Shortly, the doctor came back into the room with the two views of my shoulder. Apparently he assumed that the technician had said something to me concerning my x-rays, because he said something to the effect that sometimes his technicians saw things that are not there. I was prescribed ten mild painkillers and a larger prescription of Naproxen, and sent home with no pain medication administered at the hospital. It was 4:00 AM and no pharmacies were open. I had to wait another five hours until 9:00 AM for the local pharmacy to open before I could get anything for pain. When I did get the painkillers, it took two of them to have any affect on my discomfort. These were soon gone and the Naproxen was ineffective.
It was apparent that I was going to need follow-up medical treatment for my injury, so I decided to see a local doctor in my hometown. The pain in my shoulder was too extreme and arm was extremely bad and now. My shoulder and upper arm had turned purple and black and it was apparent to me that I had a fracture. Remembering the words of the doctor when he referred to his x-ray technician, I thought at this time there was something in my x-rays to show what the problem was. In order to save money on new x-rays, I decided to pick them up from the hospital and take them to the local physician.
Upon arriving at the local physician’s office on a weekday afternoon, approximately ten days later, with the original x-rays, I was informed that the doctor required a fee from uninsured patients before they could be treated. So I filled out the forms and paid the fee and waited. Well, there were several people in the waiting room and I was a walk-in patient, so it took quite a while to be seen by the doctor.
While waiting I noticed that many of the people in the waiting room were known in the local community for their usage of prescription painkillers. I know this because I run a restaurant that serves beer and wine in the local area and many of these people would have been considered undesirable customers for my business which is not frequented by this portion of the community. My waiting room observations made it quite apparent that many of these customers were there to try to obtain narcotics. There was even a confrontation with a man who had brought a mother and her children into the office and obtained prescriptions of Ritalin for her children. The relationship of the gentleman to the lady was not apparent, but he did let the staff in the office know that the Ritalin was being used by the mother and not the children. He was obviously tired of the ladies drug usage. Yet, it was nothing but a short scene with the man leaving the office after voicing his complaint without any apparent result.
Finally, it was my turn to see the doctor. He seemed quite amiable and saw the bruises on my arm, which had now faded to about three ugly yellow splotches. He did know I was injured and examined the x-rays that I had brought with me. To him the x-rays showed nothing either. With the extent and area of the pain he assumed that I had a torn rotator cuff which would require surgery. He seemed to know that I was in quite a bit of pain, and I was. My pain was hardly less than it was at the time of my original visit to the emergency room. I was prescribed sufficient painkillers and referred to a specialist. An appointment was not immediately available with the specialist so I was scheduled an appointment about a month later, but before I was to visit the specialist I was scheduled an appointment to revisit this doctor to follow up. I didn’t see a reason to revisit this doctor before my appointment but I showed up anyway because I knew I needed treatment. The cost of my treatment was becoming less of a concern after a long period of living in pain.
I returned to the doctor for my appointment, with a shorter wait in the waiting room I paid my fee and went in to see the doctor. He asked if I needed more painkillers, which I did, yet I declined for the fear of being judged as a drug abuser. He then asked me why I had come back for another visit before going to the specialist. I politely told him that he had scheduled the appointment. The appointment was unnecessary, I should have asked for my fee back but I didn’t, I thought it best to just follow the system and get the necessary treatment. After all, it appeared I was going to need surgery for a torn rotator cuff.
Now, its time to take the forty five minute trip to the specialist, still carrying the original x-rays to save a buck or two, I go through the process of signing in and filling out the necessary forms. By this time there is no outward sign of injury. The specialist examined me and the original x-rays and his initial diagnosis was a possible torn rotator cuff. To be sure he sent me for an MRI and an EMG. These two tests cost me over $3000.00 altogether. Two months after falling off a ladder and injuring myself, I show back up at the specialist with the pictures from the MRI. The EMG results had not been forwarded back to the doctor but the person that administered the test had stated to me that there were no negative results, which I believe to be true. After one very quick look at the MRI the specialist stated that I had a fracture. He sent me immediately for a new x-ray, which he subsequently did not bill me for. He knew I did not have insurance and was quite upset to find out my problem was a fracture after all that time and money. The break was easy to see on the x-ray because of the angle they took the picture. Standing face forward with my palm facing outward gave a clean picture of the fracture. The first x-ray was not taken in a manner to see my injury. Thousands of dollars later I found that no surgery or treatment was necessary for my fracture. Painkillers and a sling were sufficient for such an injury.
My shoulder is fine now, yet definitely not one hundred percent. This could have been resolved with one or two trips to the doctor and proper medicine prescribed. If the doctors did not have the responsibility of determining who is or is not a drug user, they would not have to make these decisions and this type of prejudging can be avoided. Paying customers should not be scrutinized in this manner when medical care is purchased. We do not pay to be scrutinized.
In order to insure proper treatment of patients, who are paying customers whether they have insurance or not, it cannot be the doctors’ responsibility to make the final treatment decisions for their customers. It should be the medical provider’s job to advise and administer treatment and follow the instructions of the patient who has considered the advice of the medical professional.
As is, drug abusers flood our medical offices trying successfully sometimes and some places, and unsuccessfully at others, to obtain their narcotics. This is enriching the physicians with an astounding amount of office visits where there would only be a fraction of the traffic if this problem did not exist. Genuinely ill patients are getting caught up in the middle of this situation and being denied treatment by physicians who should not be put in the position to make such judgments.
By forcing the public to obtain prescriptions for specific drugs is causing many people to go completely without treatment for some conditions. Antibiotics are not obtainable without a visit and a fee to a physician. When the doctor makes a decision on what antibiotic to prescribe to his patient, he does not necessarily prescribe the least expensive applicable medication for the ailment of the patient. He is now able to make a decision based on the amount of rebate he receives from the pharmaceutical manufacturer. In other words, a shot of penicillin may suffice for your ailment, yet this other shot will cost you ten times more and the doc gets a rebate. What shot do you think you will get?
As a restaurant owner, I see the pharmaceutical representatives court the physicians’ offices. I send many large food orders to the local medical offices which are frequently supplied by the pharmaceutical companies, while trying to push their product through the local doctors. Should the medical provider be making decisions on your health based on rebates and sales pitches by drug companies? This should not be how a doctor makes a decision on a patient’s treatment. It is leading to the improper and overmedication of a large number of genuinely ill patients in our nation.
Well, this practice is not just prevalent in the non-narcotic variety of pharmaceuticals; it is present with some of the most addictive drugs in our society. This may mean that when you go to the doctor and you do need just a mild pain killer, you may get prescribed the more expensive, stronger, time-released form of the narcotic which is designed to stay in your system longer. Taken as prescribed, these narcotics never leave your system until the prescription is gone. You don’t know you’re addicted until the prescription runs out and physical withdrawal symptoms occur. The doc just got his rebate and the patient just got a monkey on their back. Now the doctor has become the worst form of drug dealer there is. The doctor has become the pusher. The doctor created the addict and the demand. If the supply runs out from the doctors, the addict is forced to find the supply elsewhere. Where there is demand, there will always be supply. There is nothing a free nation can do about that without severely infringing on everyone’s freedom of movement. So, now the new addict must obtain his/her medicine off the black market.
We are all aware of the rising cost of medical insurance in this country. Insurance coverage paid for by the employers of this country is decreasing due to the rising cost of medical treatment. It is also due to the rising number of patient visits to providers to obtain prescription medicines. Whether the patient is or is not insured, a fee is charged for each visit to the physician. This is driving the cost of everyone’s insurance to the moon.


Illegal Drugs and the Damage to our Society

There is a large demand for narcotics in our society. At one point in time aspirin, cocaine and heroin were about the same price in our country. Crime related to what seemed to be moderate drug use in this nation was low. Any person could obtain any medication without a physician. There were no illegal drugs in our country. Slowly over time, political activists have enacted laws requiring a doctor’s approval so that free people may obtain necessary medications for their illnesses. If the patient does not have access to a doctor, or cannot afford one, he/she can no longer ask the advice of a pharmacist in order to make an informed decision as to what medication he/she may need. So, this patient is denied medical treatment and medication for his/her ailment. The pharmacist is trained in this country to give such advice, yet their training is no longer used or needed in their profession. They simply dispense the product. You could have a high school graduate perform this function. If the law forces a trip to a physician to obtain medication, should they not fund the physician’s fee. If not, the government is denying medical treatment to those who cannot afford to visit a doctor’s office.
This situation has created a thriving black market for narcotics in our society. Massive amounts of money are allocated throughout the nation’s law enforcement community to battle this market and its customers. These customers being the addicts, of which many were created by the system of rebates that are received by doctors for prescribing specific narcotics. This market has caused the price of the illegal drugs on the street to rise phenomenally. The addicts are caught between a rock and a hard place now. They cannot obtain decent employment due to the vast amount of drug testing in order to obtain many of the jobs in our nation. Therefore, they cannot afford to support their habit. When this occurs, crime becomes rampant, and the innocent citizens become the victims of the war on drugs in our society. We are subject to crimes committed by addicts that will do anything possible to obtain their illegal narcotics. We the people are now caught in the middle of the battle, subjected to theft and violent crime due to idealistic laws which limit the freedom of the American citizen. As a nation, we were founded on the idealism of freedom and progressed in this philosophy for many years. In a society such as this, if these liberties are taken away, there will be constant strife causing many undesirable results.
For many years, amphetamines were prescribed liberally by physicians throughout the nation. In the mid 1990s, the manufacture of these amphetamines was banned. As a result, methamphetamines are now dangerously created in homes throughout the nation. This has become a dangerous and growing epidemic in itself. Not to mention the pharmaceutical company that used to manufacture the amphetamines had to find a new product. This new product being the time released pain killer that has also become a dangerous and highly physically addictive. This has created an unprecedented epidemic in the United States. This product, in this writer’s opinion, was created to replace the widely used amphetamines. It was marketed as a less addictive drug due to the time-release form in which it was manufactured. It seems to have been created due to the fact it was so addictive and repeat customers were pretty much guaranteed. In the beginning, this drug was praised and widely prescribed by doctors who received rebates on top of rebates as they rampantly distributed this drug. They collected their rebates and patient fees as visits to their offices to obtain the drug increased significantly. In the long run, it looks to me as if this drug was created to directly compete with the heroin market in this country. It has succeeded in creating an unprecedented amount of opiate addiction in the United States. We have built a severely unethical narcotic industry within our system at the expense of the American public.
Marijuana has been used by the human race for many years. It has no physical addictive qualities. If a patient or recreational user discontinues use of this mild yet effective and natural medicine, there are no physical withdrawal symptoms. It is commonly used for anxiety, sleeplessness, stomach disorders, glaucoma, pain, muscle spasms, etc…. The worst known side effect of this substance is the effect on the lungs. Before marijuana was criminalized, many users put the plant in confections and the product was eaten rather than smoked. Due to the criminalization of marijuana, more smokers were created in order to get the most out of an illegal and more expensive supply of the plant. The price and availability of supply has also created more IV drug users of opiates, in an attempt to get the most of narcotic painkillers. Activist politicians continue to inaccurately describe marijuana as a gateway drug. A drug that only leads to the use of much more dangerous drugs, when in fact, regular marijuana smokers are apt not to turn to harder more addictive drugs such as alcohol, opiates and amphetamines. Marijuana used on a regular basis does not produce the same problems in our society that alcohol and narcotics do. The illegal trade of marijuana does cause these problems.

Resolutions
So the next question is how do we resolve this problem? It is obvious that the current methods of battling drug addiction in this nation are only multiplying the problem. Yet, politicians on most sides of the political spectrum want to continue to pump money into increased law enforcement which continues to infringe on the rights of the citizens, in what is becoming a less free nation.
How can we call prescription medications controlled substances where proper controls do not exist?
How do we keep these uncontrolled substances away from our children? The black market services all customers, regardless of age.
How do we decrease the cost of medical insurance as long as drug abusers continue to use medical providers to obtain prescriptions, resulting in doctors’ fees paid for by the insurance companies?
How do we insure that people with genuine health problems do not get caught up in the middle of a medical industry that is bogged down by addicts?
How do we insure that genuinely ill patients are not incorrectly stereotyped as drug abusers?
How do we significantly decrease violence and crime in this country that result from the current laws and policies?
How do we put the drug dealers in our nation out of business?
How do we dissolve the street gangs of the inner cities of our nation?
How do we dramatically decrease the murder rate in the United States?
How do we halt the flow of illegal drugs that flood across our nation’s borders?
How do we decrease the use of physically addictive narcotics in our society?
How do we decrease the ever increasing population of our prison systems?
I know that the war on drugs has been going on for many years. What I am about to suggest is not a cancellation of the war on drugs. It is merely a different approach.
The current methods have been in place for many years and have proven to be unsuccessful. It should be apparent to most that as long as the demand is out there, society will find a way to fulfill the supply. When trying to cut off the supply, the product only becomes more expensive, creating rebellion, crime and violence. This theory was proven to be true during the years of alcohol prohibition in this country. Prohibition was lifted simply because it created more problems than it solved. Upon the lifting of prohibition, activists found another target, and organized crime was able to recover and recreate the prosperous years of prohibition. Every time a new law was passed prohibiting the trade in narcotics, organized crime gained a new product.
Now we are in the midst of the violence and chaos created by our nations own policies. The laws that were passed with good intentions, to create law and order in our society have had the opposite result. Anarchy is taking over in our inner cities and rural communities. Is it not time to learn from our mistakes and change our tactics?
Education, not prohibition will solve this problem. Get the product out of the doctors’ and drug dealers’ hands and put it back into the reputable business environment of our economy. Let the doctors worry about their patients’ health and they will no longer have to evaluate whether or not their patient has a legitimate illness or injury. Pass laws against rebates to medical and pharmaceutical professionals so they may make unbiased recommendations concerning a patient’s medication.
Insurance companies should only be liable for physician prescribed medications. Potentially dangerous or narcotic medications not prescribed by a physician should be dispensed by the pharmacist and signed for by the buyer. This includes cold medicines used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamines. Restrictions on minors purchasing controlled substances should be put into place.
We should allow the diet pill (amphetamine) manufacturers to restart production. This would dramatically decrease the amount of methamphetamine that is currently produced, resolving this rapidly increasing problem in the United States. Time released narcotics should not be produced due to the increased physically addictive attributes of that form of the medication. I have personally seen the effect of time released painkillers in my own community. Recreational use of painkillers has been going on for some time. The recent overwhelming increase in addicts has been due to the time released form of these medications.
If these resolutions were enacted, what we now call controlled substances will actually have some controls. Organized crime and inner-city gang activity would be reduced dramatically. They would simply be put out of business. The prison population would dwindle. The demand would be met and we could now concentrate our efforts on education and prevention rather than on law enforcement and prisons.
Drug users would no longer be exposed to the criminal element created by the illegal industry. This will decrease the social nature of drug use that is created by a black market which would no longer exist.
It is the nature of humankind to resist absolute authority. We get more results when we educate people on the dangers of their actions rather than prohibiting them altogether. Complete prohibition only creates rebellion resulting in higher rates of drug use. Isn’t it time to put our faith in humankind, and trust the citizens of our nation to make the right decisions? We as a government and our medical system have failed miserably. I think it just might be time for the American people to take the responsibility. Personally, I think we are better qualified for the job than our political and medical institutions.