NRA Logic
This is a weird story, but it totally makes sense that a doctor handing out illegal prescriptions would use this argument:
Dr. Gracia Mayard, 61, is accused of distributing oxycodone between Jan. 1, 2012 and March 15, 2013. In exchange for cash, Mayard sold 2,953 prescriptions for nearly 400,000 pills to people without doing a medical exam during the first 10 months of 2012. He didn’t even meet some of his customers before writing prescriptions.
According to an arrest affidavit, when narcotics agents went to his Cambria Heights home on Feb. 7, his son first told police that Mayard wasn’t home. Then, later that day, a blue van arrived at the house and two men tried to slip Mayard out of the home by covering him with a tarp. He took them into his office to show them his “exam room,” which was a table covered with dust and papers. “No other diagnostic items commonly present in a medical doctor’s office were observed,” the affidavit said.
In an attempt to justify his work, Mayard told investigators, “I know that it’s a big problem but what happens to the oxycodone after I write the prescription is not my concern. It’s just like a person that sells guns, he cannot control what happens after he sells a gun.”
I mean, if gun makers and gun dealers have no responsibility for what people do with a gun, why should doctors have responsibility for what their customers do with drugs? Maybe the patients are making art out of the pills. Why not apply NRA logic about responsibility to the rest of society? Why punish bartenders if they serve obviously inebriated customers who then get behind the wheel? Why go after cigarette companies for marketing to children? It’s strictly the responsibility of the user!
To be clear, I certainly don’t agree with this doctor. He deserves punishment. But it’s also hardly surprising that other distributors of dangerous materials would abdicate responsibility based upon NRA arguments about gun use.
Too bad Julius Rosenberg didn’t think of this argument . . .
It would be far more straight forward to note that arrogant pricks smirk out bullshit defenses of the indefensible. Dr. Mayard exhibited the same kind of arrogant prickery the NRA exhibits.
Because SECOND AMENDMENT! FREEDOM! LIBERTY! KING GEORGE IS COMING TO QUARTER SOLDIERS IN YOUR LIVING ROOM!!!!
And I forgot: WOLVERINES!
Funny thing here is that the quartering of troops is prohibited by the Third Amendment, and there have been very few Third Amendment suits. I think I’ve heard a story about an airman who was ordered to live at his parents’ and he sued the Air Force, claiming that the Air Force was quartering soldiers in his parents’ home. More incredibly, the story claims the airman won his case.
Second, even without the Third Amendment, no one would quarter troops into private apartments and houses. That’s a nightmare for discipline and combat readiness. Think about it: having a company spread out in a suburb, with a squad living in each house, the actual homeowners trying to keep on with their usual lives despite the quartered troops. Some families being too friendly, with the men offering booze to the soldiers. Some families quarreling with soldiers and making their lives unpleaseant in every way. Some soldiers stealing things from their lodgings, some being accused of it unfairly. Some batteries and rapes. Some government property sold off to the locals, some stolen by them. Court martials convened maybe every other day. A unit loses its cohesiveness very rapidly. It’s much better to camp out into a nearby park and keep the soldiers under control.
Engblom v. Carey
Third Amendment Rights Group Celebrates Another Successful Year
NEVAR FORGET!!!!1!!1!
That is quite marvellous.
And if there’s one thing I don’t want in my living room it’s a bunch of redcoat quarters, not to mention the leftover mess from bandsawing them each into four pieces.
“…Where they come down/ That’s not my department/ Said Werner von Braun”
+1.
The man who aimed for the stars but kept hitting London.
And the odd starving slave laborer over the head.
According to an arrest affidavit, when narcotics agents went to his Cambria Heights home on Feb. 7, his son first told police that Mayard wasn’t home. Then, later that day, a blue van arrived at the house and two men tried to slip Mayard out of the home by covering him with a tarp. He took them into his office to show them his “exam room,” which was a table covered with dust and papers.
That paragraph deserves some sort of recognition for terrible editing.
The only logical conclusion is the police were the ones covering him in a tarp and shoving him into a van.
New form of arrest.
Because guns cry freedom every time they kill someone.
The Speaking Gun wants a word with you…
What really grinds my gears is that scumbags like this make it harder for legitimately suffering people to get the pain management meds they need.
My father is a Doctor, a podiatrist and surgeon. He is highly reluctant to prescribe the pain medication he knows his patients are in desperate need of because the last thing he needs is the federales descending on him because they think he’s written one too many vicodin scrips.
Agreed! After a major surgery I was given meds for 5 days. When I called and requested a couple more days worth, he insisted that I had to come in to the office and be seen. Just riding in the car to and from the office was extremely painful. And it wasn’t as if just looking at me he could tell how much pain I was in! Being treated as someone who was merely “drug seeking” was very frustrating, degrading and painful.
Doctor: “I’m afraid you probably have no more than 6 months to live.
Patient: “I’m in terrible pain–could you renew my prescription for pain medication?
Doctor: “No–that stuff is very addictive. We need to ween you off it.”
(Story told by a friend of mine, now, alas, deceased).
And people think we don’t already have “death panels’…
The other side to this is being a regular Joe who is constantly treated like a doctor-shopping addict every time I go to see a physician.
The last time I was seeing a doctor regularly, she prescribed a smorgasbord of drugs I’d never taken before. After three weeks on said medication and another 72 hours without sleep, I called in to describe the huge problems I was having with insomnia and disturbed sleep. She basically accused me of seeking barbiturates or opiates. Fuck that.
(When I was kid growing up, we had a family doctor I absolutely hated, but didn’t know why. After avoiding him for years, I went to see said doctor for a nerve injury when I was around 16 years old. “Mom,” I said, “I don’t like Dr. Bennet.” She asked me why. I said, “Because he’s a drug addict. He’s got pupils like basketballs and he’s covered in junkie sheen.” Mom replied, “Dr. Bennet’s a good doctor. He always prescribes what I ask for.” A couple years later, when I was home from college, the big news in the local paper was that a local pharmacist was facing criminal indictment and Dr. Bennet had fled to Mexico.)
“To be clear, I certainly don’t agree with this doctor. He deserves punishment”
Why? What he did was illegal, but not immoral.
Distributing high-powered pain medication to people with no knowledge of their medical circumstances is, in fact, immoral. That shit is in fact dangerous and should only be used under the supervision of a competent physician.
Easing patient pain is certainly not immoral, but handing out scrips without any sort of rhyme or reason to anyone who says they’re in pain definitely is. The doctor has both a legal and a moral responsibility to exercise due diligence in determining the patient’s pain level and trying to address it with other therapy options before just handing out pills without even seeing the patients.
+1
I heard of a doctor around here who did just as this one did, and his patients weren’t all seeking drugs for recreation/self-medication. Some were dealers.
See Murc’s reply at 1:37. The DEA are already all over docs who prescribe heavy-duty pain meds legitimately; illegitimate use just makes ‘em even more likely to make it difficult to adequately treat pain as the DEA threatens the prescribing privileges of docs with hurting patients.
Right, and anyone who’s dealt with this as a chronic pain patient themselves or a family member of one can probably tell war stories about being treated like an addict by a doctor and office staff who all know you aren’t an addict, but their legal people make you submit to draconian rules because of the asshole doctors who ruin it for those who actually need the medicine and aren’t abusing it.
Yeah. I’ve wondered if maybe the DEA’s putting the screws to docs might possibly also have to do with the AMA’s revised position on medical marijuana.
Absolutely, the right to oxycodone is in the constitution right along with the right to choose.
I think licensed doctors with various ethical responsibilities have more responsibilities here then gun sellers, including an obligation to examine the person to determine if they need this dangerous drug, determine it is a good fit etc.
There is more there than a person who sells a handgun, who very well has less of a responsibility. The reference to marketing to children, who are treated differently for various purposes as “users” also is kinda, you know, different. Yes, an extreme version of the NRA argument might be there, I guess.
Also, the doctor was justifying his actions by using something of a bad comparison. Kinda not surprising.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a pill is a good guy with a pill.