Prescriptions Harder To Get Filled?

For John, BLUF:  The bureaucrats wish to save us from ourselves, every one of us, at all times, in all locations.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

This was the first item up on the InstaPundit blog this AM:

COMPASSIONATE GOVERNMENT: Reader David Craig emails:

My wife suffers from chronic pain as a result of a serious back injury, and while surgery helped, she still requires daily narcotic pain medication to manage her pain.  Because of prescription drug abuse, the states and DEA have been changing regulations almost monthly for narcotic medications.  In the past we could fill her prescriptions at midnight of the day written on the prescription, but now they can only be filled during “business hours,” you know, cause pain apparently only happens 8-5 Monday through Friday.  This morning a new paperwork regulation required the pharmacist to spend more than 30 minutes filling one prescription for my wife.  The pharmacist was as frustrated as my wife and her doctor, and the pharmacist told me it’s only going to get worse with more regulations.

My wife is not the criminal.  Colorado and the DEA are forcing her to live in pain as they restrict her legal access to pain relief.  No one should have to watch the person they love suffer in unimaginable pain just because of bureaucratic hurdles put in place to slow illegal drug use.

I had to get that off my chest, and you were the only outlet that I had.

Yeah, all these hurdles mostly affect honest people.  Junkies and dealers know how to get around them.

I guess the fact that I can no longer purchase carbon tetrachloride at my local pharmacy, as I was able back before I was a teenager (That is to say, before the age of 13 I rode my bike up to the Pharmacy, by myself, and purchased it.), is a good thing.  On the other hand, it made a great track cleaner for the HO layout.  All that said, prescriptions should not be a pain in and of themselves.  It makes me think of the medical marijuana issue.  States have, through the ballot initiative, voted to approve its use.  Why are the Feds making a federal case out of this.  Let the Ninth and Tenth Amendments work.

Those who think it will get better in the future, raise your hand.

You are excused from this session.

Regards  —  Cliff