The Pain Truth.
Would people rather hear it from Dr. Lora Brown?
Or from Dr. Russell Vega?
When the topic is prescription drug abuse, it’s something for Lakewood Ranch High School students to consider seriously.
Other county high school and middle school students, too.
All of us, actually.
Brown is an intervention pain management specialist locally and on the governor’s task force on prescription drug abuse. She addressed LRHS students last Tuesday about the dilemma as part of a state and national education campaign.
It is a huge problem, she told them.
A huge problem in Bradenton.
A huge problem in Manatee County.
A huge problem in their school — and other schools.
It is an epidemic, Brown said.
How many Ranch students got her message?
Or let it go in one ear and out the other?
Junior Shelby Sielaff told the Herald the address generated plenty of conversation.
Hope so.
Not heeding Brown’s words is foolish.
It can be fatal.
Vega knows that all too well.
By the time he talks about the dangers of prescription drug abuse, it’s usually too late.
You’re already laid out on a cold steel slab in the morgue.
Vega is the state medical examiner for the 12th Judicial District. He’s the man who, after the autopsy, states the cause of death for the record.
Unfortunately, Vega has gotten a lot of practice at that, of late, when the cause is prescription drug abuse.
Last year alone, there were 36 deaths in our county — most of the victims in their 20s and 30s — solely attributable to prescription drugs.
That figure doesn’t include deaths caused by a combination of prescription drugs and alcohol or cocaine and heroine, methadone, Oxycodone or Xanax.
What a deadly cocktail.
Too many times we have read about them after yet another teenage overdose.
Or gone to their funeral.
Barbara Gentry, project director for the Manatee County Substance Abuse Coalition, said she has attended more services for students who have OD’d than she wants to remember.
Plagued by “pill mills,” Florida is struggling to come to grips with this scourge.
n Prescription drug abuse is the No. 1 killer of middle-aged Floridians.
n Nearly 3,000 Floridians died from prescription drug abuse last year.
n An average of seven Floridians die daily from misuse of prescription drugs.
If that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.
The Pain Truth.
When someone like Dr. Lora Brown speaks about it, people, especially students, should listen.
Or their loved ones can hear it from Dr. Russell Vega.
Mannix About Manatee, by columnist Vin Mannix, is about people and issues in Manatee County. Please call Vin Mannix at 745-7055, write him at Bradenton Herald, P.O. Box 921, Bradenton, FL 34206 or e-mail him at vmannix@bradenton.com. Please include a phone number for verification purposes.
