I’m gonna throw this in under the banner of Who Won the Week, because I have a real winner here! This prompt is the brainchild of Fandango, who posted a little earlier here.
I joined in this prompt consistently until lockdown. Even though I joined in, I mostly took the opportunity to post almost tongue-in-cheek, because it is far, far easier to find losers than winners. Heck, we elected most of them!
So I was taking part in this prompt until lockdown, but took a break because I wanted the news to get back to a non-COVID variety. I had actually decided that before I posted again, my winner/loser would need to be somebody totally unrelated to the virus. So, here goes…
In the UK, when somebody is issued a prescription, the meds generally come in the manufacturer’s branded box, but the pharmacy puts a sticker onto the box. The name of the pharmacy, your name, the date of issue, and last but not least, some brief directions. It’s not foolproof, but it vaguely personalises the meds.
You get this for any prescription meds. Rather than just the meds thenselves, they are tied in to the patient.
In the UK, there are at least two types of meds. There are the regular type of meds, the kind of thing that people like me take, for their blood pressure or their diabetes, like the image above. Then there’s another type called controlled meds. They are the serious meds, things like morphine, codeine etc. Even cannabis now. The really powerful stuff. As you can imagine there is a ready market for these drugs, hence the name controlled – access is very limited.
Sometimes, our daughter is quite useful for bringing us some tittle-tattle from within the village. She has an ear far closer to the ground than I do.
Recently, she told us about the local drug den. She even stayed there during lockdown. I’m not sure whether she herself uses, I guess she has experimented with them, like most of us. My relationship with my daughter is never deeper than “how are you?” so you can imagine we’re never going to get into discussing serious things like drugs. She does, at least, seem to live a regular life, never seems doped up, when I see her.
All through her stay, our daughter was telling us “this place is gonna be raided soon”.
Seemingly unrelated, we have a neighbour in our leafy part of the village. She has a daughter the same age as our daughter, which is how come we know her. Unfortunately, she has some serious health problems. In fact, my wife, who works at the local surgery, thinks that this lady regularly receives meds for palliative care. High-strength painkillers, I guess. Very much controlled drugs. In her condition, that’s not unreasonable.
So, put 2 and 2 together.
Daughter is fortunately now safely home, out of there.
Drug den was raided last week by the police. I’ll put to one side how these things are supposed to be secret, but people seem just to know when these things will happen.
As part of the search, they apparently found several months’ supply of whatever meds the neighbour had been prescribed. Every one with her name on them.
You know, I often feel that the police are, in general, not very bright. But maybe a lot of the time, they don’t need to be? Because sometimes, criminals don’t seem to be very bright, either!
