God have mercy on you if you live in this "Land of Plenty" and develop some form of horrific pain.
You'll end up with "plenty" alright: plenty of unnecessary pain and suffering.
The government is so obsessed with "fighting" drugs that they've destroyed the ability of doctors to reduce suffering among their patients.
Five years ago, Frank Fisher, M.D., was arrested by goons from the California Gestapo (known as the Attorney General's office) and charged with drug trafficking and murder.
He was guilty of relieving his patients' severe pain with legal narcotics for which he had a license to prescribe.
The patients who had died succumbed from their injuries or from medical illnesses, not from the narcotics Dr. Fisher prescribed.
Richard Paey, a patient suffering from intractable pain, was unable to obtain enough Percocet to relieve his pain, so he forged undated prescription forms his doctor had given him to get what he needed to relieve his misery.
He never sold a pill; he paid for the medication, and maintained he was being denied his right to pursue a pain-free life.
Their document was, according to Dr. Sally Satel who authored the New York Times article I referenced above, a thoughtful and lucid description of the problem of prosecuting doctors.
As Dr. Satel stated in her article, "It is not known how many patients need long-term treatment with opioids, particularly at high doses.
Dr. Russell K. Portenoy, chairman of pain medicine and palliative care at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, cites surveys estimating that as many as 6 to 10 percent of Americans suffer from chronic, disabling pain.
If a patient has "chronic, disabling pain," I maintain that 10 out of 10 of them could benefit from long-term, high-dose treatment.