Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Seniors Selling Drugs

Our economy is growing and prospering according to the president, yet many senior citizens are selling their prescription drugs to make ends meet.
Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown in jail, imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by the concrete and steel around her.

The woman — who spent two days in jail after her arrest last December — is among a growing number of Kentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a crime authorities say is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling their painkillers and other medications to addicts.

"When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for $10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries," Floyd County jailer Roger Webb said.

Experts suspect the problem is not limited just to Appalachia. We should be ashamed in this country: Billions for war, but no butter for our seniors.

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