I was pleased to see your article addressing this terrible problem of prescription medication abuse within our society. I did however have a few issues with your article. My first issue may seem trivial but the brand-name drug Duragesic was misspelled as “Durogesic”. It’s not that misspelling a word is all that important, but in dealing with medications, details are extremely important. Physicians and pharmacists might see this as a distraction and lead them to question the content of the rest of the story. Another, perhaps trivial, fact is that Sublimaze is indeed fentanyl, however, it is generally only used by anesthesiologist and not readily available within the community, so it was probably not as good an example The next issue that I had with your article was that you did not interview a specialist in addiction treatment for their insight or even a local pharmacist, especially a community practioner. These men and women stand on the front lines everyday dealing with the issue of prescription drug abuse. I think their input would have been crucial to your story. You did get a quote or two from Rick Allen, Director GDNA, but you did not identify him as a pharmacist, only as a director. Did you know Mr. Allen was a pharmacist?I use the title of Mr. because I do know that Rick is a pharmacist but I do not know if he has a Doctor of Pharmacy degree as I do. That may seem petty but I believe it would help your readers comprehend the story at a higher level if they knew exactly who was providing the information they were reading.
The main reason I am taking the time to send you this e-mail is because I am confused about the fact that you wrote, “She (Kadie) began to buy and deal. She would obtain methadone at a clinic for methamphetamine addiction, then would sell half the pills”. I am a licensed pharmacist in the state of Tennessee, I have worked in retail pharmacy, as a quality assurance officer at a methadone treatment facility, in managed care as a clinical pharmacist and I have served a few terms as the President of the Chattanooga Area Pharmacists Society. I have been practicing pharmacy for over twenty years and I do know that you do not treat methamphetamine addiction with a medication that has a completely different mechanism of action and that is used to treat opiate addiction to drugs such as pain-killers and heroin. Perhaps it was just a misprint or perhaps it was misinformation provided to you from a non-clinician or a misspoken clinician. Regardless of the reason it will not bring Kadie back or anyone else who has died because of medication overdoses. I do think though that you should reference statements like this if they were brought into question or ask a clinician, perhaps a pharmacist, if this is something that makes sense or not.Thank you again for working on this article, the community needs to know about this problem.
Medicine that kills
I was pleased to see your article addressing this terrible problem of prescription medication abuse within our society. I did however have a few issues with your article. My first issue may seem trivial but the brand-name drug Duragesic was misspelled as “Durogesic”. It’s not that misspelling a word is all that important, but in dealing with medications, details are extremely important. Physicians and pharmacists might see this as a distraction and lead them to question the content of the rest of the story. Another, perhaps trivial, fact is that Sublimaze is indeed fentanyl, however, it is generally only used by anesthesiologist and not readily available within the community, so it was probably not as good an example The next issue that I had with your article was that you did not interview a specialist in addiction treatment for their insight or even a local pharmacist, especially a community practioner. These men and women stand on the front lines everyday dealing with the issue of prescription drug abuse. I think their input would have been crucial to your story. You did get a quote or two from Rick Allen, Director GDNA, but you did not identify him as a pharmacist, only as a director. Did you know Mr. Allen was a pharmacist?I use the title of Mr. because I do know that Rick is a pharmacist but I do not know if he has a Doctor of Pharmacy degree as I do. That may seem petty but I believe it would help your readers comprehend the story at a higher level if they knew exactly who was providing the information they were reading.
The main reason I am taking the time to send you this e-mail is because I am confused about the fact that you wrote, “She (Kadie) began to buy and deal. She would obtain methadone at a clinic for methamphetamine addiction, then would sell half the pills”. I am a licensed pharmacist in the state of Tennessee, I have worked in retail pharmacy, as a quality assurance officer at a methadone treatment facility, in managed care as a clinical pharmacist and I have served a few terms as the President of the Chattanooga Area Pharmacists Society. I have been practicing pharmacy for over twenty years and I do know that you do not treat methamphetamine addiction with a medication that has a completely different mechanism of action and that is used to treat opiate addiction to drugs such as pain-killers and heroin. Perhaps it was just a misprint or perhaps it was misinformation provided to you from a non-clinician or a misspoken clinician. Regardless of the reason it will not bring Kadie back or anyone else who has died because of medication overdoses. I do think though that you should reference statements like this if they were brought into question or ask a clinician, perhaps a pharmacist, if this is something that makes sense or not.Thank you again for working on this article, the community needs to know about this problem.