Community Chat

[SahmIam]

@YorkieonmyPillow  I did.  I also think it's safe to say that this same situation has played on in MANY small towns across the country. If anyone does a search, you'll see similar situations in other towns in WV, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio....just naming a few. My opinion/thoughts still stand.

Let's not leave out Florida who is leading the nation in crooked pain clinics (another interesting search for those interested).

[RedTop]

As a native of WV, this is an old story, but the drug problem continues here to this day.  

McDowell County is the focus of this story; once a strong, booming county when the mines were open and running millions of dollars of coal out on railroad cars every month. Now it’s a ghost town with only small struggling businesses.    We’re talking about the smallest rural towns like Keystone, Northfork, Kermit, Panther that may only have one traffic light, and everyone had family working in a coal mine.   When the mines shut down, there were no other jobs to be found in the area.   Some people moved and found work in other WV counties, or left the state.  Most others stayed, simply because going was too much of a challenge.   

Coal mining is very hard work, and there are A LOT of injuries in this line of work.   My husband was a coal miner for 12 years, and left the job site many times in an ambulance.   Quite a few pain prescriptions were written for him in those 12 years, but he never filled them, regardless of the injury.   Coal miners were one of the first groups to become addicted to narcotic medications.   

The pharmacies involved in this investigation were very small independent street corner businesses; not a recognizable chain pharmacy.   The prescriptions were mainly written by the same physicians, who were stripped of their licenses and received jail time.   One of the local physicians in that county sold opioids out of his office for cash.   It went on for a very long time, and was quite an enterprise for him, until the sting operation closed it all down.   

[SahmIam]

@RedTop  My father grew up in a town where, when they put up the first street light 10 year ago, there was a huge parade. I mean...small town. I so hear you on everything you wrote.