The Opioid Epidemic Has Gotten So Bad That People Are Abusing Their Pets to Get Them

[TomSea]

People using their pet's ailments to get fentanyl.

The Opioid Epidemic Has Gotten So Bad That People Are Abusing Their Pets to Get Them

‘A former veterinarian friend of mine told me that he would often have clients abuse their dog’s veterinary Fentanyl patches’

This can’t be real, Kentucky police officer John Thomas thought to himself when he got the call from Elizabethtown Animal Hospital on December 4, 2014. Veterinarian Chad Bailey explained that Alice, a female golden retriever he was treating, had identical, 2-inch scars, and he suspected the owner was responsible for both. Furthermore, according to the dog’s medical history, she had been injured and treated for the same injury a half dozen times over the last year. Bailey first called other clinics, warning them not to prescribe the pet owner any more medication. Then he called the cops. “Dr. Bailey knew exactly what the woman was up to,” Thomas tells me. “It was the vet equivalent of doctor shopping.”

Thomas found Alice’s owner, 23-year-old Heather Pereira, in the hospital waiting room. “She had a couple of ‘Failure to Appear’ bench warrants so I knew she was gonna be in my custody one way or the other,” he says. After examining the dog and finding three identical lacerations, he arrested Pereira and took her to the police station for an interview. “She went in circles with me for a while, claiming the injuries were all accidental,” Thomas recalls. Her story also changed multiple times — at one point she even claimed her son flushed the dog’s medication down the toilet. “She doesn’t have any children,” Thomas notes. Not to mention, Pereira’s explanation of the vertical cuts — “they came when she ran past a sharp basement gutter” — defied basic physics. Eventually, Pereira broke down.

“Okay I did it!” she blurted.

Read more at: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-opioid-epidemic-has-gotten-so-bad-that-people-are-abusing-their-pets-to-get-them

[mountaineer]

Idiots.

[GtHawk]

Idiots.

Who, the supposed idiots that supposedly do this, or the idiots that put this kind of claptrap crap out there in defense of their supposed opioid crisis?

[mountaineer]

Anyone who uses Fentanyl or any opioid when they don't actually need it for pain is an idiot. Anyone who uses her dog's Rx pain medication for herself is an idiot.

[Smokin Joe]

I object to optional social problems being placed in the same category as influenza and ebola.

These problems are, at some point, a matter of choice.

No one chooses to get a disease like those which cause epidemics, but you can, by being in proximity to the infected.