Sheriffs in North Carolina want access to state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances.
The state sheriff's association pushed the idea...saying the move would help them make drug arrests and curb a growing problem of prescription drug abuse. But patient advocates say opening up people's medicine cabinets to law enforcement would deal a devastating blow to privacy rights.
Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/09/08/669723/lists-of-pain-pillpatients-sought.html#ixzz0zPnEuXGE
Monday, September 13, 2010
Cops Target Sick People in Pain
“Law enforcement” in North Carolina is demanding the names of all patients on prescription pain medications, to harass and possibly cage them. There are many terrible parts of the drug war, but the targeting of sick people in great pain has to be among the worst. Already, doctors can under-prescribe painkillers, for fear of being destroyed by the FDA, the DEA, and the rest of the criminal alphabet. Meanwhile, everyone in government, not just in North Copolina, lusts for control over others. But stamping their jackboot on the face of a cancer patient in torment must give them a special thrill.-Lew Rockwell
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Why do you scapegoat law enforcement for the legislative problem that is the drug war, or the judicial system which actually convicts and imprisons people? Do you just not understand how it works? Do you realize there is pressure on them from all sides to enforce the stupid laws and put people into courtrooms which are nothing but expensive charades?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I wish the police didn't enforce drug laws, but police who choose to do that don't stay police for very long. That doesn't sound like a problem with the police, to me.
Uh, it's the cops who are asking for this new power in this case, not the legislature specifically.
ReplyDeletebut police who choose to do that don't stay police for very long. That doesn't sound like a problem with the police, to me.
Just like those guards at the Nazi concentration camps didn't enact those police state policies. They were just doing their job.
Yeah, which is why they hung the leaders and let the low-level guards and soldiers who actually perpetrated the crimes largely go free. The exceptions are often seen a historical travesties, like Eisenhower's slow, gradual slaughter of 1.7 million German POWs, arguably the largest US war crime ever, resulting in more German soldiers dying during peacetime than in war.
ReplyDelete[Even if you disagree with me, I'm determined you take away something useful, damnit.]
People do things when they're ordered to. Aren't you familiar with "The Milgram Experiment?" It pretty much demonstrates that people will cause harm to others if someone is standing over them telling them to do it. That's just how people are.
You're blaming people at the bottom who have little, if any, control. You think the officers on the street lobby for change, or is it top brass in administration who need to justify ever inflating and bloated budgets?
You're blaming the dog, not the owner who let him off his leash and yelled "Sick 'em."