First, an explanation
I know that I promised the History of Cannabis for this week's Drug War post. However, yesterday leading into today, and probably tomorrow, I've had an experience that I feel will make an impression on people.
And now for story time
To begin, I live in Texas, and all good Texans know that summer time means days spent floating the river. For those of you who have never done or heard of this, we like to get big, heavy duty, inflatable donut tubes, a cooler full of beer (no glass or stryofoam on the river, y'all), and a group of good friends and park our butts in a tube on one of several rivers for a few hours and float our way down.. When the days get long, and the temperature approaches triple digits, this is my all time favorite thing to do, so yesterday, I called up my best friend and her fiance, and we made the trek to the San Marcos river
We decided to float a stretch of the river that I am not particularly familiar with, and I was not aware of the intensity of the rapids at the end of this float. As a result of this, we had a little mishap where tubes were overturned, a few beers were lost, and my friend got tangled up in the ropes tying our tubes together, so we decided to untie and take the rapids again. We did this a few times with no trouble until I decided I was going to go down the rapids without my tube. Lots of people were doing it safely and it looked like fun.
As I was approaching the first of three small waterfalls, I walked out on the rocks, and slipped in the moss on one of them. As I fell, I caught my entire body weight on my right arm and my elbow twisted awkwardly. It hurt, but it didn't seem too bad, so I continued down the rapids. When I got back to the little spot on the bank we'd claimed, I realized that my elbow was a lot worse for wear than I had originally thought. I resolved to stay in our spot and keep watch over the cooler and our other belongings while I kept my arm immobilized.
The pain got steadily worse over the course of the rest of the night until I could not move it at all without screaming. I went to bed thinking that it would surely feel better in the morning. Boy was I wrong. I woke up this morning in excruciating pain. I did a little online research and deduced that I had sprained my elbow.
When you sprain a joint, if you go to the doctor, they do x-rays, wrap the joint and send you home with pain pills. These services are useful, don't get me wrong, but when you have no medical insurance, that ER visit is very expensive. Of course, I do not have health insurance because my husband and I are currently in the midst of some of the most difficult times we've had financially. That being the case, I can't afford to pay out of pocket for an ER visit.
I am sure if you've made it this far, you are wondering what any of this has to do with the Drug War. This is where that part of the story begins. We have established that I am injured, and cannot afford to see a doctor. We have also established that I know exactly what the doctor would do for me if I did go see a doctor. They would write me a prescription for some form of opiate pain killers. This is what I need while my elbow heals enough to actually use it. But the only way to get opiate pain killers is to go to the doctor and get a prescription, and doctors won't just write a prescription without an actual visit on their books. So I am shit out of luck.
In a world without a Drug War, I would be able to go to any store and purchase the opiate pain killers that I need to function normally until my arm has healed. There would be no need for a doctor or health insurance. I would (and should) be able to spend $25 on a bottle of oxycodone and an ace bandage, instead of paying $800 for what amounts to a bottle of oxycodone and an ace bandage.
The Drug War is immoral. It puts poor people at risk. This is just a sprain, but imagine if it were something more serious.