Boomer Beware

On what basis does the Federal government justify refusing to allow free citizens the right to decide for themselves the degree of pain that they find tolerable, and treating it inexpensively when it becomes excessive? This is really a very simple question: By what right does the Federal government deny pain relief to citizens who are experiencing varying degrees of physical pain? Is it that the Federal government always knows what is best and chooses what is best for individual citizens? Or is it an insidious and evil streak of collective cruelty that possesses politicians and bureaucrats who have the power to grant or deny pain relief to others? Many famous experiments have been performed that demonstrate how willingly, even gleefully, the average college student, put in a position to inflict pain, will torture others when it can be done anonymously and/or without fear of retaliation. This seems to me to be the only rational explanation to the question, “Why are law abiding, tax paying, and generally honest citizens denied access to inexpensive and effective pain medication in the United States of America?” Withholding cheap, effective pain medication from those who need and desire it can only be explained by the desire of Federal bureaucrats and politicians to inflict pain on citizens simply because they can do so without fear of being held accountable for their cruelty.

In countless other nations around the world, cheap, effective pain medication is available over the counter (OTC) from pharmacies, or even from convenience stores, discount stores, and supermarkets. Not in the USA, however. Here someone in pain must gain access to a medical doctor, pay for an expensive office visit; convince the skeptical physician that the pain is both real and so intense as to be intolerable, and only then be dispensed a very small quantity of pain medication. Rather than make use of cheap, readily available, and safe opiate based pain relievers, the giant pharmaceutical companies promote new, less effective, and far more dangerous pain relievers – only recalling them from the market when the evidence of the dangers posed by these new medications becomes so overwhelming that judges and juries start hitting “Big Pharma” with multi-billion dollar lawsuits. All this because the Federal government, in its infinite wisdom and cruelty, has decided that rational adults, even those in their fifth, sixth, seventh decades and beyond, will not be allowed to gauge their own pain and buy cheap opiate based pain medication OTC to relieve their own suffering.

As the Baby Boomers age, the number of individuals suffering needlessly grows by thousands every day. How long will the aging Boomers continue to buy the lies of the Federal government and Big Pharma that deny them the pain relief they so desperately need? If hydrocodone, codeine, and other natural and artificial opiate based medications are made available OTC, will some people become addicted? Of course, but no more will be addicted by OTC pain medication than are now becoming addicted every day to street drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Millions of Americans are self-medicating with alcohol, because they either cannot afford medical care, or because the doctors they go to for pain relief are being harassed by the Federal government and Big Pharma for prescribing cheap opiate based pain relief medicines.

Thousands of doctors have stopped prescribing the cheap, readily available pain medicines that their patients need to maintain any decent quality of life. Why? – Because Federal Drug Enforcement thugs are threatening them with prosecution as drug dealers if they don’t fall in line. Big Pharma would much rather sell the next $25 per pill pain reliever that come out of their labs, regardless of the uncertainty about product safety, than see aging Americans have access to cheap, safe, OTC opiate based pain medications. Big Pharma and its lobbyists own Congress, as well as the alphabet soup of Federal agencies that do their damnedest to regulate every aspect of our lives. If you are a Federal bureaucrat, and hope to land a cushy, high paying job with Big Pharma when you retire early from your present place at the Federal feeding trough, wouldn’t you do all you could to protect Big Pharma in the meantime?

AARP ought to be taking this issue on with all of the resources it can muster. Why isn’t it doing so? Could it be that AARP is more interested in marketing its endorsed programs than in really looking out for the interests of senior citizens? It is time for seniors and soon to be seniors from every walk of life to start demanding that the cruelty stop now. It is time to demand that senior citizens, as well as all free adults in the USA, have cheap OTC access to hydrocodone and other opiate based pain medication. The answer to the question posed in the first sentence of this post is simple: There is no justification for the Federal government to refuse free citizens the right to decide for themselves when they are in pain, and to have access to cheap, safe pain relief without the expense, inconvenience, and intrusiveness of getting a doctor to prescribe. It is cruel and inhuman treatment to withhold OTC opiate based pain medication from American citizens. And it is doubly cruel to do so with seniors.

Senior citizens, this is a call to arms. Subject your elected representatives to an unceasing barrage of demands that hydrocodone and other natural and artificial opiate based pain medicines be made available OTC now. Demand a stop to the harassment of doctors who prescribe pain medication, and demand that the prosecution of compassionate doctors who are defying the cruel demands of the Federal government and Big Pharma be ended. You know what is at stake. Don’t wait till you, your spouse, or someone else you love is needlessly suffering in agony with pain that could be easily relieved before you raise your voice and your fist demanding change. Don’t let another town hall meeting with your Congressional Representative or Senator go by without a vocal demonstration by seniors organized and demanding an end to the ‘nanny state’ mentality telling us that someone else knows more about our aches and pains than we do. Take control of your own pain management. At your age, you’ve earned the right to make such decisions for yourselves. You don’t need some thirty-something overpaid bureaucrat or Big Pharma executive deciding whether you are hurting enough to be thrown a few crumbs from their table, or experimenting on your bodies with their latest dangerous drugs.