On Fri, 2007-02-09 at 08:13 -0800, MC Ward wrote:
> Here at least I know of one methadone
> clinic for people in constant pain. A friend goes
> there and is really helped by that medication. (People
> don't realize that methadone does more than help
> heroin addicts.)
This is not just my story but the story of hundreds of thousands of
chronic pain sufferers in Australia and world wide that would number in
the millions.
Methadone; how I know you well. Have in the past been on the private
methadone program and on some very high doses that would kill a mere
mortal human. The problem is, even with the private methadone program
here in NSW, you must visit a pharmacist twice a week to be dosed and
then be given three and then on the second visit two take away doses and
you are treated like a junky, which is to say, very badly. It is a
deeply humiliating experience to be on methadone. Further to this you
also become registered as an addict by NSW Health. For this reason I am
perhaps unable to set foot legally in the United States. I could be
denied a US visa as being an undesirable, being a registered opiate
addict. Methadone is a chemical jail. You are jailed by NSW Health
without the benefit of a trial by jury or even the right to consult a
lawyer simply for being sick and in intractable pain. So much pain that
I could not even walk until I had taken my methadone dose. When I first
started on methadone I only had to visit a clinic once a week and be
given take away does for the rest of the week but the government
bureaucracy changed these rules and methadone has become so constrictive
that I am unable to access it since I would be too weak to make it to my
local pharmacy and if I do make it that far I would have a long wait and
then be treated as low life scum and without any courtesy.
Methadone as a pain relief medication itself is equal to or better then
morphine, since tolerance does not develop as steeply or quickly as
morphine does. But the ever constricting rules of the government health
bureaucracy makes methadone untenable as an effective pain relief
option.
The governments of Australia makes opiate pain medication difficult, if
not impossible to get through medical and legal means because they have
a financial interest and gain in doing so, which is to say governments
actively promote, effectively market and make financial gain from the
market in illicit heroin and cocaine. Second only to the illicit market
in weapons and firearms comes illicit drugs as the highest income earner
for the Australian and worldwide capitalist economy. When I was a high
income earner living in the elite Eastern Suburbs of Sydney I could
afford to buy illicit heroin and cocaine from suppliers who catered to
this elite high income market and it was always pure high quality heroin
and the best pain relief known to medical science. If such suppliers
were to be arrested for supply they would pay bribes to various
government agencies as well as making donations to the political parties
in government and as a result would receive a 12 month holiday in a very
comfortable minimum security prison, meanwhile also making arrangements
for the continuation of supply to their elite Eastern Suburbs clients.
In the less elite areas heroin dealers who were arrested and unable to
be given the option of paying bribes had their assets seized and the
return from these seizures are paid into general revenue, so again the
government benefits by balancing the books and these asset seizures
amount to quite a large financial return for the government. This might
sound like a conspiracy theory but I am a very highly trained
investigative journalist and this is what I have observed in my past
active life as a journalist. In one case, a heroin dealer who was busted
needed to put aside $20,000 to pay the judge so as to get a light
sentence. Bribes and asset seizures are part of the cost in the business
of supplying heroin to customers in an arena where the government
actively makes opiate pain relief difficult to get legally through
medical means and so then is able to financially benefit from fostering
the market in illicit heroin. Only the rich can afford pain relief on
the illicit market. The poor must suffer in chronic agony. If you are
poor, too sick to earn an income and are consigned to the poverty of an
invalid pension, pain and agony is your fate.
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