From The Agitator:

Under the new city policy, most public hospital patients will no longer be able to get more than three days’ worth of narcotic painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet. Long-acting painkillers, including OxyContin, a familiar remedy for chronic backache and arthritis, as well as Fentanyl patches and methadone, will not be dispensed at all.

The Federal government has been dictating treatment policies with regard to painkillers for years, so the fact that America’s most self-serving authoritarian mayor wants to get in on the act is not exactly a stunning surprise. What’s really funny is when you hear people declaring that Obama care won’t come between you and your doctor.

Like almost all government regulation, the people most affected and the people who pay the biggest price as a result of it, are ordinary citizens.  If you don’t have a lobbyist in Washington, you don’t matter.

This, like most drug war policy, is sold as being preventative. The real truth is that it punishes people who haven’t done anything wrong because they might do something wrong in the future. If you’ve ever seen the movie, Minority Report, you’re already familiar with the concept of arresting someone for precrime. Of course, in the movie, they only came after you if the precogs identified you personally as planning a crime. In “the land of the free”, the government dispenses with that step and arrests you simply for being in a position to commit a crime. Drug use is outlawed, because you might do something irresponsible if you use drugs. The exact same logic is used to outlaw or restrict gun ownership. Oddly (or not), conservative advocates of the drug war never see that the very same argument they use to outlaw drugs can easily be used against gun ownership.