Elderly criminals sell pain pills to buy food
Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown injail, imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by theconcrete and steel around her.
The woman – who spent two daysin jail after her arrest last December – is among a growing number ofKentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a crime authoritiessay is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling theirpainkillers and other medications to addicts.
“When a personis on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell theirpain pills for $10 apiece, they’ll take half of them for themselves andsell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries,”Floyd County jailer Roger Webb said.
Since April 2004,Operation UNITE, a Kentucky anti-drug task force crated largely inresponse to rampant abuse of the powerful and sometimes lethalpainkiller OxyContin, has charged more than 40 people 60 or older withselling primarily prescription drugs in the mountains.
“It used to be a rare occasion to have an elderly inmate,” Webb said. “Five years ago it was a rarity.”
Read more in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Ed: Hmmm. What’s criminal: an 87 year old selling her medications to buy food, or a system that doesn’t ensure than an 87 year old can have her drugs and eat food too?