More Vindication!

I got the following e-mail in my inbox today.  I love it when I discover that *I* am not a lonely voice in the wilderness.  (how's that for hyperbole?)  Here we have a carefully reasoned idea, complete with statistics, to do something I have been agitating for.  That is, DRUG TEST THE DRUG PUSHERS!

Here's the e-mail, just as I received it.  Don't you love it?  Call your elected officials no matter where you live and tell them we need this!  Make these health care workers PEE IN A CUP!  I have to as a condition of employment  and as a condition of being licensed AND SO SHOULD THEY! 

Jackie

It’s outrageous. A methamphetamine user convicted of a federal felony for drug dealing just won the right to treat patients again in one year.

Pilots would be grounded for life. Lawyers would lose their license forever. Doctors that use and deal drugs, like Nathan Kuemmerle, face little discipline or deterrence. That has to change, and you can help today by calling for reform.

The Los Angeles Times conducted a remarkable investigation that found widespread problems with prescription overdoses and a fundamental failure in California to discipline and deter drug-dealing and drug-using doctors.

This week, I talked with mothers who lost their sons to drug-dealing doctors and are ready to march on Sacramento for change. Will you help clear the road for them by asking your legislators to hold hearings, data-mine state databases about doctor prescribing patterns, and improve doctor deterrence and discipline?

These families have been devastated by the preventable loss of their children. The fact that their kids’ deaths were preventable is what is so frustrating for them and tragic.

How is it possible that drug-using and drug-dealing physicians, including the 71 identified by the Los Angeles Times whose prescribing has led to 3 or more deaths, are not known to the public and are nearly all still practicing without scrutiny?

Pilots must undergo mandatory random drug testing because they hold the lives of so many passengers in their hands. Physicians who operate on patients and are in a position to overprescribe or use narcotics themselves should undergo similar mandatory random drug tests.

Sacramento needs to put the issue of doctor oversight, discipline and deterrence on the front burner. Will you help by weighing in today?

Thanks for helping these families and sending a message to Sacramento.



Jamie

PS: You can read today’s Los Angeles Times story about our call to Sacramento and find the full investigative series here.