Back from a quick visit to Las Vegas with just a few days before I pack up the fam and move back to The Big Apple – well, NJ at least. I have mixed feelings but NYC is one of a small number of places I think I can live and be comfortable. I would rather be in LA or Oakland, but my life just doesn’t allow for it right now. Anything could change at any time. Much *needs* to change! In due time it surely will.
There is still tons of pain med news. Things are really picking up. I really am going to get myself going with my podcast soon. If I do that properly I will probably have my life take on dimensions I can barely imagine now. That is if I do it right. For now, I just gotta keep ahead of the news so I am ready to go when the time comes. Til then – more news:

• This is so far over the line, and yet – crickets. They are literally throwing around the idea of assigning you a patient ID to get pain pills and monitoring your medical treatment. People who are silent now are as bad as those participating. The word “rights” has no meaning anymore if this goes forward.
• Who with power has a real incentive to get to the bottom of vet suicides? People who want to sell more Ketamine?
• This is murder – no debate it is at least Negligent Homicide.
• I am amazed at how often people get together in a room to discuss how much pain it is ok for other people to endure. I shouldn’t be so amazed I guess, but that they usually also go out of their way to exclude the people who will be experiencing that pain. If this isn’t wrong, then nothing is wrong.
• If our only goal were to save the lives of addicts, it can be done. That really isn’t our goal though; rather, we want to make sure there is a punitive angle too! In fact, no treatment of addicts can be punitive enough in a society that blames addicts for their own deaths!
• Zero Hedge loves the “Pain pill pushers are guilty of bank robbery” angle. Not sure even they believe it, but here it is.
• I hereby invite the staff of Vox to forswear any opioid use for any reason at any time since they seem to think it isn’t needed. I will pay for the bracelet saying so – just say the word bro!
• I have spent enough time in PA to expect stuff like this, but the eagerness with which PA residents gave up their access to pain relief so as to better git thuh junkeez is quite bracing!
• I was in no danger of voting for the junior senator from NY, so decrying her drug warrior BS isn’t very brave of me. Just the same, it’s traysh.
• This is not news but must be repeated over and over again…Most heroin addicts didn’t start with prescribed pain pills.
• Why do people peek from behind curtains at their neighbors? Why do people listen in on other people’s phone conversations? Why are human beings literally unable to mind their own f’ing business? Why doesn’t NPR know what the word “alarming” means?
• Even more States’ Wrongs – this time Minnesota Narcs In the Clear.
• If there really is a Drug War, the drugs won.
• One day we will be able to stop pretending the war is on drugs – it’s on people who use drugs. It is governments fighting their own people – even as their own people increasingly can’t fight back! Maximum power applied against those with no power – and yet power has failed to bring home the bacon. Of course, we all know this was never about the drugs. Never.
• Here is some good news.
• The good name of the People’s Helicopter will not be co-opted by the Executive Tyrant!
• If there is a hell, it is for John McCain.
  U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Cory Gardner (R-CO), and U.S. Reps. John Katko (R-NY) and Thomas R. Suozzi (D-NY) too.
• Indifference to the suffering of others, where it is possible to mitigate that suffering, is morally no different than inflicting that suffering. Medical issues already highly correlate to things like Bankruptcy, but to find so many of them are also related to suicide leaves only the conclusion that our society believes that death is ok for anyone who gets sick and/or loses one’s physical “abilities”. I think this is mostly an expression of our perverted form of capitalism in which one’s value is determined by their capacity to earn money. Most of us will never earn anything but a few nickels to rub together, but it seems all want to preserve this system so that no one misses the chance to become a petite tyrants