Physicians Writing Illegal Prescriptions

Your two-part series on the “misuse” of prescription drugs (“Rx for an Epidemic,” Aug. 18-19) served no purpose other than to amplify the constant drumbeat certain vested interests keep making in order to instill fear, suspicion and divisiveness in our society. America always seems to need an enemy.

It’s a basic fact of human experience that people are going to get intoxicated and alter their consciousness. It’s been going on since time immemorial, in virtually every society that has ever existed. And it is not going to stop.

Instead of destroying ourselves ethically, morally and financially in an attempt to deny human behavior, let’s make the use of all intoxicants safe and controlled and create laws to prevent their use from affecting general public safety. The constant demonizing of a significant portion of our society has got to stop.

MICHAEL DAVIDSON

Long Beach

I certainly agree that bozos like Dr. Eric C. Tucker should be totally stopped. But street drugs are still very dangerous. They are cut, poisoned with stuff like LSD and in that sense, even more lethal per use.

In the end, the little guy who has a regular practice is scared of Big Brother. I had a 13-inch colectomy and needed a post-op colonoscopy but all they had to use was Demerol. I don’t do well on Demerol. They refused me even 1/32 of Dilaudid. Who suffered? Me.

KENNETH A. BITTLE MD

Camarillo

I was shocked by one statement in the article on Rohypnol, Aug. 19: Assemblyman Larry Bowler’s (R-Elk Grove) claim that “because of the rapes, this drug is the only drug known to victimize the innocent.”

Can a legislator submitting a drug control bill really be this ignorant? Can he really mean to imply that once Rohypnol is controlled, all remaining drug abuse will be victimless? Is Bowler unaware that over half of the 40,000-plus annual traffic deaths in the U.S. are caused by drug, mainly alcohol, abuse? Anyone who is familiar with abusers of alcohol knows the terrible toll they can take on those who must associate with them as friends, business associates and especially family. Are none of these people innocent?

COLE COLEMAN

Santa Barbara

On the same page, you report on the drug industry’s fierce battle against tighter regulations on Rohypnol (the “date-rape” drug) and its fight against triplicate drug forms. Major corporations have also fought against regulating smoking (“There’s no evidence that it is addictive”), seat belts, OSHA, pesticides, smog control and air-quality regulations as well as higher minimum wages, Social Security, adequate medical insurance, child care and almost anything else that will cut profits.

In every case, the threat is that regulations will cost “American jobs.” This from a system that has fired tens of thousands of Americans to seek higher profits overseas. The Republicans want to get the government “off our backs.” Maybe it’s time we asked, “Whose backs?”

DICK BRANDLON

Arroyo Grande