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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 19925
[Health]
Date Posted:
8/12/2008
6:39:38 pm EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 17,664
RSS: 13,297
Comments: 16
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Stores Accused Of Illegally Selling Birth Control, Pain Meds
Author: NBC 4 News Source: NBC 4 News (D.C.)
Title: STORES ACCUSED OF ILLEGALLY SELLING BIRTH CONTROL, PAIN MEDS
  Arlington County police are investigating a small chain of variety stores accused of illegally selling birth control pills and prescription pain medicine, Julie Carey reported First On 4.
The three Botanica Boricua stores in Arlington, Woodbridge and Silver Spring specialize in religious statues, candles and herbal remedies, but police documents reveal that customers also can buy medicine without a prescription.
In recent months, some customers have been working undercover for the Arlington County Police Department.
A search warrant shows the investigation began in October 2007 after a tip that "customers were routinely supplied with medicines for both pain and birth control."
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Community Thoughts: There are 16 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| It IS Relevant | Aug 15th. at 4:09:40 pm EDT
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Snoozepossum (Mooresville, North Carolina) - Email Me
What's the deal with the vehement, even insulting objections to the article even being here? the articles on endangered species legislation and obesity-health parameters could also be considered non-pagan issues, but neither article got any such commentary.
It is relevant, to some of us; if that severely chaps someone's nethers, there are plenty of other good articles to read.
Botanicas are pretty much Santeria shops. Gee, pagan much?
Many of us have interests that are influenced by pagan and magical mindsets, such as complementary/alternative healing . While I don't agree with selling opiate-derived meds without ANY system of keeping distribution responsible, birth control pills are a different ballgame. They are not addictive, do not cause impaired ability to drive, etc., and the estrogen dosages are not that dramatically different. The ongoing battle over birth control related health issues is not limited to traditional, mainstream pharmacies; one of our local herbal/alternative health stores eliminated any tea blend or other product that contained pennyroyal, motherwort, or any other uterine relaxer, on the grounds that they can be used as abortifacents and some customers were offended by them. When I asked about the fact that women use Yogi brand and several other teas for cramp relief, or that pennyroyal is the best child and pet safe insect repellent I've ever used, my points were dismissed as invalid.
Dunno about you, but the idea that someone else's religious code can determine what medicines I can and can't use bothers me.
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| This Reminds Me Of The When | Aug 14th. at 3:00:02 am EDT
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Jenna (Cary, North Carolina) - Email Me
The US government outlawed the eldery and the uninsured from bring Canadien medication in from acrossed the border. The position of the FDA is ridiculous on these matters, and we all need to take notice. I have heard from many people in small towns that their only pharmacy is run by some Fundie nut who refused to stock birth control pills even for married couples with prescriptions. Little by little the government is taking the choices for our own well being out of the hands of the citizens and putting them into the hands of religious nuts who think that a woman is only good for being a walking uterus and gay people should be stoned or at least harassed and shamed until they kill themselves. Like many of the other posters, I'm not too crazy about the selling of pain killers without a prescription, but when it comes to birth control pills, why are they not over the counter already? We sell alcohol and cigarettes legally without a doctor's note and those things actually kill people. Put a label on the birth control pack warning of possible drug and physical interactions and be done with it. I went to my doctor to get birth control pills. She took all of five minutes and perhaps three questions "Do you smoke"? "Can you remember to take the pill everyday"? "Do you take any other drugs"? That was it, and I received my prescription. It's not like doctors wave some magic wand and can foresee who can and cannot take the pill. High blood pressure, as smoker, on other forms of medication? Don't take the pill. It's that easy.
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| Stores Like This... | Aug 13th. at 10:49:10 pm EDT
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kenneth (Des Plaines, Illinois) - Email Me
are also a symptom of a society that has no meaningful access to health care for 50 million or so people. Not everybody who sell under the counter meds is a drug dealer and not everybody who buys pills this way is a junkie. It's a survival mechanism in many areas where people can't afford to miss a day's work at minimum wage, let alone the $5,000 trip to the ER, which is the "primary care" for most of them.
Even those of us who have decent access tend to squirrel away a few pain meds for those times when somebody has an abcessed tooth or back injury only to be told they can see you a week from next Thursday. Most of us at one time or another have bummed one from a relative or friend, or given one to somebody in dire straits, and under our lovely system, all of us have in so doing committed a felony. As an aside, in Canada, you can buy low-strength codeine/aspirin tablets over the counter, and it doesnt seem to have brought on a wave of addiction as a result.
As for birth control, it is absolutely insane that a prescription is required. It should be OTC, or for sale by a pharmacist who can explain all the basic facts/potential side effects, etc.
I suppose this isn't a "pagan issue" per se, but it does go to the larger question of what sort of a society we want to build and live in. I don't think we are, at root, a community that's knee-jerk anti-government or counterculture, but I do think many of us are starting to see the parallels between the intolerance we face and the sort of Calvinist prison-state mentality underlying the drug war and the war against alternative health practicioners.
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| Could Become An Issue Later... | Aug 13th. at 7:43:06 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
While I understand the restriction on opiates, I fear that this is likely to become normal for those drugs that are safer and over the counter, but are found objectionable because they offer some benefit that certain factions would find disagree with. And Birth Control and abortifacents would certainly fit.
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| Why Is This Here? | Aug 13th. at 6:00:17 pm EDT
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Wren (Tampa, Florida) - Email Me
As a cautionary item. Many Pagan shops and/or vendors sell herbs and/or tinctures, etc. Just as tarot readings in most municipalities must be for 'entertainment only', unregulated herbs and/or supplements must be sold with the caveat 'these claims have not been verified by the FDA'.
Short version: Even if you are not paranoid, be careful with herbal sales and claims regarding use of the same... and that goes for both buyers and sellers.
--Wren
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| Codex | Aug 13th. at 3:20:56 pm EDT
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Orion 6Xray (Park City, Kentucky) - Email Me - Web
The U.S. Government through the D.E.A has outlawed common helpful Vitamins and Minerals. Vitamin B17 which is helpful in treating cancer is on the D.E.A schedule list and is illegal to have in the United States.
On 31 Dec 09 the United States will harmonize itself with a U.N. mandate that will outlaw all Vitamin and Mineral supplements and crack down with draconian laws on organic and small family farmers. Community coop farms are amongst these who will be regulated into illegal status.
It will also deregulate Genetically Modified Organisms and Factory Farming. Increasing cloning and Growth Hormone levels in the population's food supply.
This regulation is called Codex Alimentarius and more info can be found here:
[Web LINK]
This is where the true environmentalism should be focused and anyone who cares about the health of their children.
Find More info -- HERE
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| What Is The Meaning Of This? | Aug 13th. at 3:15:50 pm EDT
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David Eagan (Cleveland, Wisconsin) - Email Me
I would like to add my voice to those questioning why this story is even here. I don't see an article regarding illegal distribution of prescription drugs to be particularly relevant to Neo-Paganism. For those of you who think this has something to do with herbal remedies or are upset with U.S. drug policy are just being an embarrassment to the rest of the Neo-Pagan community. Not necessarily because of your non-mainstream opinions but because of the irrational way in which you react to any opposing, or potentially opposing viewpoint. In this case there has been a rabid reaction with irrelevant rants about drug policy and herbalism to an unrelated article. I know this is the internet but have some self control people.
We as Neo-Pagans need to be more careful and deliberate with our thinking. Belief in magic and having an open mind does not mean we should make our minds into trash heaps where we throw every idea regardless of quality, proof, or rationality.
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| UnConstitutional US Drug Laws | Aug 13th. at 2:08:57 pm EDT
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me
Obviously the owner of these stores had little respect for US drug laws, or their draconian state counterparts. There's good reason for that, when our drug policies and laws implementing them are by design and effect intended to cause ethnic and religious discrimination, and go far outside legitimate government authority to limit fraud or serve compelling public health and safety interests, to the power and profit of politicians, the medical industry, and the prison industrial complex of not just cop shops but courts, lawyers, insurance and other industries, that all feed on the prohibition mentality's side effects.
If one tracks violent crime statistics shifting over the period of post-Rockefeller Commission drug policies, it's clear than existing drug laws are the single biggest cause of violent crime in the USA. That's done by creating a prohibition on spiritual and self medicinal traditions nominally protected as civil rights, and self-abusive acts some people will do anyway that lack any basis for government intervention. The black market forces people outside the law, elevating real crime rates, but allowing legal businesses and government to harvest 95% of the related cash flow over already inflated black market drug prices. That results in a very nasty power and profit addiction in legislatures, cop shops, and many businesses that profit heavily. It also enables a perverse political tactic, of campaigning to reduce crime largely caused by bad laws without which there would be no major drug (or sex related) black markets, and doing so as a unifying issue in a society so diverse few such issues exist.
Some US Attorneys and DEA senior agents know US drug laws as they exist are blatantly unConstitutional. The video transcript of one policy forum at Yale several years back includes some of them admitting as much, after I asked a leading question about the civil rights issues of drug traditions, and effect of drug laws to trample those rights. When drug prohibition enables spending 7 times more domestically and 23 times more bribing other countries than medical harm reduction approaches to treating addicts as humans instead of police profit and power excuses, the Constitutional charge to interpret what follows in the interest of general welfare of citizens is also upended.
Narcotics are a non-issue as to public health justification for drug laws, unlike antibiotics whose overuse can lead to development of new resistant strains of infections. When crime caused by bad drug laws is higher than any prevented by restricted drug access, existing laws invert the required "rational basis" test before considering the "compelling government interest, least restrictive means" tests for aspects of their use that burden discrimination criteria protected citizens.
When we, via Congress, FDA, DEA, etc. perpetrate numerous frauds in intentional misrepresentation of spiritual and medicinal substances, it's hard to view anyone attempting to circumvent the resulting bad laws and regulatory policies as committing any crime. That's what this case appears to be, of a vendor offering indiginous, familiar pharmaceuticals to customers seeking them, without any signs of fraud as the old snake oil and tonic salesmen were known to do in the days when drug regulation began to force honesty into how substances were marketed.
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| With More And More Uninsured | Aug 13th. at 2:06:19 pm EDT
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Lynette (Roanoke, Virginia) - Email Me
places like this will continue to crop up.
With 27% of the US uninsured, and the number growing every day, people will be getting what help they can where ever they can. Choosing between buying groceries for the month, or shelling out $135 to spend five minutes with a doctor to get the prescription you need only to discover that the prescription will cost you $210 at Walmart (and that's the cheapest place in town!) will make people do desperate and foolish things.
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| So-called "defense" | Aug 13th. at 11:24:45 am EDT
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Sapphire Firebloom (Williamson, West Virginia) - Email Me
Yeah, it's illegal. But it's something that will continue to crop up unless things change. If current legislation goes through, we'll see a lot more of these places. And people will be lining up to get what they feel is necessary.
Yes, I read the entire article. And yes, I understood that it was not "herbal remedies." And I really don't care that it was an herbal shop. I'm not commenting on this as a Pagan - but as a libertarian. The pain pills aren't the issue to me. I myself specifically referred to the fact that birth control pills were sold there - and that the US government is going through legislation in an attempt to ban these as "abortive." If that happens, I believe it's a small step towards banning the sale, growth, or distribution of any herb that could do the same thing. The US operates on the illusion of the freedom of choice, when the government is taking steps to eradicate the choices we do have until we have only one choice left - the one they give us.
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| OMGs! | Aug 13th. at 8:07:37 am EDT
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Dynnys Derwydd (Lubbock, Texas) - Email Me
Yo people, this story has nothing to do with herbal supplements or remedies. It has to do with the illegal sale of perscription pain medications and birth control pills in a place that is not a pharmacy. So please take a moment, and a chill pill, and read the article thoroughly before writing a post.
No one not a licensed and certified pharmacist may sale perscription drugs. One of the drugs sold was a pain med, and while there are good reasons for pain medications there is also the danger of abuse and even resale on the street, to your neighbors, friends and children.
Fight with knowledge, not in ignorance.
honi soit qui mal y pense,
Dynnys Derwydd
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| Confused By Reviewers And Wren's Nest | Aug 13th. at 5:49:51 am EDT
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Lady FoxFire (Franklin, Pennsylvania) - Email Me
I don't understand why this story is on here.
The police claim that the store is sell prescription birth control and pain meds in Mexico, NOT herb version of these meds.
If this was a local drug dealer caught selling this stuff this store would never have appeared but since this a herbal store it's declared important to the Pagan community.
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| Quit Snitchin! | Aug 12th. at 11:14:51 pm EDT
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Just A Wolf (Seward, Michigan) - Email Me
With all the goofy laws going in place about limiting prescriptions and medical procedures, all we need is snitches trying to bust the local alternative supply shop. Meanwhile, how many community leaders are drinking and driving, downloading kiddie porn, or taking in other vices?
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| I Have This Feeling... | Aug 12th. at 11:14:42 pm EDT
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Sapphire Firebloom (Williamson, West Virginia) - Email Me
that once the government has outlawed anything remotely related to personal choice that they'll go on to outlaw any herbs used medicinally - so they can keep those pharmaceutical kickbacks a-comin'! Goddess help us. And this kind of activity is what we have to look forward to if they DO outlaw the pill...and it looks like it's happening.
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| New Designer Drug? | Aug 12th. at 9:36:42 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
I'm very sorry to hear it, considering the fact that some pharmacists won't sell such things even when one does have a prescription for them.
It appears that if certain factions have their way, such things are likely to be classed up there with cocaine and marijuana, thus narrowing choices even further.
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