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Liz Leyden
Member since Oct 2, 2015
Recent Comments
Re: “Data Dive: As Opioid Crisis Ramped Up, Pills Flowed Into Vermont by the Millions”
"Three of the top four pharmacies in the list are the Kinney Drug retail stores in St Albans, Morrisville, and Barre, which "bought" from the distributors over 2.5 MILLION pills over a six year period. Individual pharmacies in small towns. Pushed that many pills out their front doors. What did they think they were doing? What did they think was going on? They had to know. They were reporting it to DEA, but doing nothing to stop it."
When I worked in assisted living, Kinney drug managed the facility's medications. The vast majority of the residents got their meds from Kinney, including people who had just had surgery, people with severe chronic pain and people on hospice. When a lot of people with chronic pain (like elderly people) are concentrated in one place, you see certain patterns in prescribing.
Anyone who thinks opioids are being handed out "like candy" hasn't tried to fill an opioid prescription lately. The pendulum has swung back to denying opioids to people with cancer, people who have just had surgery, people on hospice, and people in sickle-cell crisis (on top of the medical establishment discounting pain in black patients).
Posted by
Liz Leyden
on 07/24/2019 at 3:32 PM
Re: “Since Pot's Legalization, Vermonters Have Been Fined for Public Use”
""Can you think of any other patient taking any other medication that would be subject to this type of potential criminal liability, civil liability liability, period just for trying to take his medication?" Fair said."
Sure I can. Ask anyone who takes opioids.
I went to North Beach for July 4th, and the smell of weed was everywhere. You can get cited for smoking cigarettes at a Burlington park, so why not weed?
Posted by
Liz Leyden
on 06/07/2019 at 8:13 PM
Re: “'I Cried as I Read This': An Obit for an Addicted Vermonter Goes Viral”
"If Maddie was a black guy from the Bronx found dead in his bathroom of an overdose, it wouldn't matter if the guy's obituary writer had won the Booker Prize, there wouldn't be a weepy article in People about it," del Pozo wrote. "
When heroin addicts were brown city-dwellers, addiction was a law enforcement problem, solved by long periods of incarceration. Now that the addicts are white people outside the city, it's a disease, which deserves compassion. Funny how that happens.
Posted by
Liz Leyden
on 12/17/2018 at 3:37 PM
Re: “Adoptees and Parents Reflect on Transracial Adoption in Vermont”
Andrea Yates's kids weren't transracial adoptees. How exactly did transracial adoption factor into the Hart murders?
Posted by
Liz Leyden
on 12/17/2018 at 1:28 AM
Re: “Do No Harm: New Rules Discourage Overprescribing Opiates”
"In 2015, enough painkillers were handed out in Vermont to give every man, woman and child a bottle of 100 pills," former governor Peter Shumlin said in his signing statement."
How many were given to post-surgical patients? How many were for hospice patients?
The vast majority of opiate users are not addicts. Opiates are becoming as stigmatized as psych meds.
Posted by
Liz Leyden
on 04/27/2017 at 5:43 PM
Re: “Vermont Inmate No. 144711 Is a 90-Year-Old Veteran”
"What kind of eldercare facility allows one of their residents to be taken out in handcuffs just for getting agitated?"
One that wants to keep staff. Assaulting healthcare workers is a crime in several states, including Vermont. Being a 90-year-old veteran does not make anyone a saint.
Posted by
Liz Leyden
on 03/25/2017 at 9:30 PM
Re: “Data Dive: As Opioid Crisis Ramped Up, Pills Flowed Into Vermont by the Millions”
"Only in America would we deliberately foster a deadly epidemic among ourselves so that a few on the top could make a pile of money. Only in America."
It has happened before, with Iran-Contra and the feds allowing urban areas to be flooded with cocaine and heroin. However, those addicts were brown, so their addiction was a crime, not a disease.