Florida: Prescriptions R Us
We're going about this all wrong.
We all know that Florida is always at the top on the lists of the bad stuff, and at the bottom of the lists of desirable stuff. For once, we should celebrate--rather than bemoan--our strengths.
Tourism is one of the legs of our economic stool, isn't it? (The others are development and agriculture, I think, although you'd never know it from our tomatoes, which often taste like they were shipped from a Siberian sawmill). Here we have the one attraction that people will travel all the way down here for, even in a recession, and Gov. Crist goes and signs a law making it harder to get.
Is this the kind of thinking you want out of your governor, much less your next U.S. Senator? After all, if they can't get their prescriptions filled here, they'll just go and get them someplace else, like Mexico. So, no harm done in the end. Plus, it helps keep our international trade balance in line.
We should be offering packages to our honored visitors. "Stay two nights in a Florida hotel, and we'll throw in a bus tour of the top pill mills in Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Reserve within the next 30 minutes and we'll send you home with a pet Burmese python."
We can even have a slogan: "Florida. You'll love us from your first dose."
CHAN LOWE has been the Sun Sentinel’s first and only editorial cartoonist for the past twenty-six years. Before that, he worked as cartoonist and writer for the Oklahoma City Times and the Shawnee (OK) News-Star.
Comments
You're eating the wrong tomatoes, try some ugly ripe ones. Of course we aren't allowed to make much money on them because the republican anti-regulation guys invented regulations saying they aren't "round enough", and so can't be sold out of state. (http://www.santasweets.com/esp/ugly-ripe-faq.php).
Posted by: Tom | July 20, 2009 9:10 PM
I agree the ugly ripe tomatoes are good but they cost way too much. $4.99 a pound?? That's rediculous! I just came from a visit in Tennessee and they were less than $1 a pound for home grown real tasting tomatoes. And to the subject at hand-I think we need pain clinics. Not a patient of one myself but I would hate to be in terrible pain and not be able to get medication for it. I do think there is probably some regulation that is needed with the clinics.
Posted by: steve | July 28, 2009 10:01 AM
I think that we should at least be grateful that we are getting some sort of commerce, even if it's not the ones we want. People will go elsewhere for the pills if not here. Sure they need regulation but Crist is an up tight conservative jerk that wants this state to be nothing but a retirement home and that will not do anything for our economy other than kill it further. I at one time needed the pain meds but I went through a truly legit doctor that was up front about not liking to perscribe narcotics even though that is all that really worked on the issues I have. None the less we need to monitor these pill mills and see to it that people only get one Dr. to perscribe them their meds once a mopnth. Federal regulation will keep things more on the up and up but people need to get them and it might as well be here so we can squeeze a little bit of revenue of the situation.
Posted by: Scott | July 28, 2009 7:24 PM