If I am under a Doctor’s care in Maryland and receiving 120Qty/40mg Oxycontin a month, then I get in trouble and end up in jail. Would I still receive my meds in jail or is it strictly no narcotic medication allowed in jail whatsoever. Do they have to give them to you or not?
I’ve known terminally ill people who were not given their prescribed medicine in jail. They sued and lost.
According to our resident Prison Doper Doc, Qadgop the Mercotan, all of a prisoner’s medical needs must be met, including narcotic pain killers if that’s the best thing for the job. There would very likely be restrictions on how and when the meds are administered (like you might have to go to the infirmary every few hours and get one dose at a time), but if you need it medically, you will get it.
And hopefully, since I’ve used his full username and I think I even spelled it correctly this time, he’ll be in to verify or clarify if he does a vanity search.
Technically you should, yes. In fact, it’s federally mandated - refusing to give medical service that is vitally needed is, I believe, considered cruel and unusual punishment.
However, just to say it’s the law doesn’t mean it happens. There’s a prison out in Lovelock, an hour or so drive from here, where inmates routinely don’t get their medicine. There isn’t really any reason for it, either, except for maybe laziness. One guy went into diabetic shock because they wouldn’t give him his insulin for his extreme diabetes, and almost died. Still, no one does anything.
~Tasha
It happens more than people realize.
I have been diagnosed with an acute inability to par-tay. Give me my prescribed narcotics!
Your supposed to get your medical treatment, but like all institutions some will provide badly for implimentation. Inmates normaly go to the medical area and take the medicines. Inmates on narcotics have been forced to throw up the medicine by other inmates to get the narcotics.
I have a friend who worked as the nurse in the County Jail. One of her jobs was dispensing all medications that prisoners were taking.
When prisoners entered the jail, any medications they had were taken away. Including everything from prescription medicines to simple asprin or cough drops. The medications (legal ones only; illegal ones were confiscated) were placed in a big nurses cart, with separate compartments for each prisoner.
Twice per 8-hour shift, she wheeled that cart around to each cellblock, and dispensed medications to the prisoners. They were required to take the medicine right then, in her presence. She gave all medications, even to prisoners who normally took their own medication, like diabetics who gave themselves insulin or asthma patients who had inhalers. Even for something as commonplace as a headache, a prisoner could not just take an asprin – they had to ask to see the nurse, and she would dispense an asprin tablet to them if she felt they needed it.
For prescription medications, they had to be in the original drugstore bottle with the patients name on it. If the prisoner had taken some out of that bottle and put them in a pocket-sized pillbox, he would not be allowed to take them until the jail had proof that they had been prescribed for him. Either a family member bringing in the original drugstore bottle, or the doctors prescription. If he didn’t have his medications on him at the time of his arrest, again he had to get someone to bring them to the jail for him. Only in extreme life-threatening situations would the jail order a supply from the County Hospital down the street.
This was a big job, since there were 750-1000 prisoners who she had to take care of. She was very careful to get prisoners their medications each day, because that was what her nurses training had taught her.
But she mentioned that some of the guards were not at all concerned, even commented that such medical care was ‘coddling criminals’. Sometimes prisoners would ask to see the nurse with a medical problem, and some guards would refuse to let them see her. When she heard about this, she filed complaints against them, and the guards got in trouble for this.
Sometimes the prisoners got their medications a bit off their schedule, since she had the whole jail to deal with during her shift. But in general, she was a careful, caring nurse who treated them well.
Inmates are not allowed to bring any prescription medications in to prison with them. However, all medications, including narcotics, will be given to an inmate if they are prescribed to him. Some medications are just given to the inmates with instructions on how to take them. Other medications, such as narcotics, are given directly to the inmate from a nurse on a one by one basis. The inmate goes to the infirmary unit, the nurse hands him his medication and watchs him take it.
Seems like ** Qadgop ** is just the guy to answer this one, seeing as he’s a prison doctor and all.
<lights the Qadgop-Signal>
Agreed, especially since there are conflicting answers. I also wonder if a person is being prescribed oxycontin on the outside, would they be prescribed it on the inside? See, I have a friend who is a recovering cancer patient, takes oxycontin for extreme pain and is facing some time in a few months and he’s worried about what might happen. Oxycontin is the only thing that really works for him.
In states like California where medicinal marijuana can inmates with legitimate prescriptions recieve it in state prisons? Afterall it’s still illegal under federal law.
Cite?
If prisoners are being forced to regurgitate pills, or are “fake taking” in order to stockpile narcotics, there are simple steps that could be taken to overcome that. A nurse/doctor/health care worker could administer their medication by subcutaneous, IM or IV injection rather than an oral tablet, for example, or they could take a liquid preparation that is harder to fake swallow.
You can get painkillers in other formulations than oral tablets- abuse of the system is not a good reason to deprive someone of adequate pain relief, especially when two minutes thinking could come up with a solution.
Welcome to the boards, overeasy4!
One of the things that makes The Straight Dope Message Board (SDMB) fairly unique among message boards is that we like to hold ourselves to pretty high standards of evidence when answering factual questions. Sometimes anecdotes (“I have a friend who…” or “This one time I…”) are the only way to answer a question. Usually those kinds of questions are in the section of the board called “In My Humble Opinion”. Generally (and there are always exceptions), in this part of the board, “General Questions”, we are expected to back up our claims with citations from reputable, unbiased sources like peer-reviewed articles, newpaper stories or other statistical sources of information.
This question in particular is one of policy. While the answers may vary in different prisons, there is an actual, factual answer to the question, and it’s best answered by actual prison doctors (granted, none of us can swear for sure that **Qadop **is an actual prison doc, but he’s got a long history with no obvious contradictions that makes us believe his claim, and he’s very well respected around here). One could also find the answer by linking to actual policy statements. If you know the policy isn’t being followed in practice, then you could, for example, cite a newspaper article on medical care being withheld in prisons, or a state survey showing the percentage of patients prescribed narcotics inside prisons as compared to patients prescribed narcotics outside prison. Basically, some way to help us accept that your point is valid and factually accurate.
When **adam yax **wrote “cite?”, he was asking you to back up your claim with data so we don’t think you’re some random nutjob who doesn’t actually know anything.
Hope this is helpful, and please don’t think I’m trying to be harsh. I did the same thing back when I joined, and another Doper gave me basically the same post I did you. It helps sometimes to have the unwritten rules explained. See you 'round the Dope! 
If they are prescribed, then yes. In the federal prison system, each institution has a pharmacy on site. There are a number of restrictions on how medications are distributed (link to PDF of BOP policies). The Feds say that between sixty and eighty percent of their inmates have drug addiction issues, so managing prescriptions is an issue they take pretty seriously.
Policies and procedures can obviously differ in state and county facilities, and it’s impossible to provide a specific answer without knowing the jurisdiction in question.
I often prescribe narcotics to my patients, and they generally get them.
I tend to prescribe narcotic painkillers only for moderate to severe acute pain, and for malignant pain. I tend to not prescribe it for chronic non-malignant pain. That’s a good rule of thumb for any physician, not just a prison physician.
Diversion is a problem. Other inmates shake down the patient for the med, ordering him to cheek it rather than swallow it, and threaten consequences if he tells officers about his behavior. Some inmates discover they can sell their dose. Some officers have been known to divert the medication, too. Addiction affects more folks than just inmates.
On the prisoner units, the “controlled” medicines are distributed at set times by officers. The officers do not dispense the medication, they just make it available to the inmate for them to take at the times and dosages prescribed. The officers report it to us if an inmate refuses to take controlled meds as ordered.
The “controlled” medicines are not just the ones with the big red “C” on them which are regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, they’re also the psychiatric drugs, meds to prevent seizures, meds to treat HIV, TB, and a few other things too.
The officers hate handing out meds, and I don’t blame them. We’re trying to get medically trained folks to do the job, but it’s a huge one, and adding personnel would cost a lot of money.
If a drug is not controlled (like HCTZ for high blood pressure, indocin for pain), the inmate keeps these meds in his cell, and is expected to take them appropriately.
Giving the medication in liquid form or injectable form or making them come down to the nurses station to be witnessed taking it can be done, but it’s a hassle. We’ve got a finite staff, stretched thin, to do the job that needs doing.
Perhaps this spring, at our next open house, I’ll have a spot or two open on my guest list and make an invitation for a doper or two to see where I work.
Oh, and just because you enter my prison with a documented history of taking Oxycontin 80 three times a day with valium 20 three times a day, don’t expect me to not change your medications to what I feel is appropriate, once I’ve assessed you. Once you’re in my institution, I and my minions are your doctor, not the gullible guy you’ve been seeing for your back pain.
If you’re on that med for pancreatic cancer, you can depend on getting equivalent doses of similar potent narcotic analgesics for me at need. But if you’re on it for chronic musculo-skeletal low back pain, we’ll be exploring alternate treatment plans.
Understandable, but what would you do so the patient doesn’t have withdrawl? Because going from taking say… four 40mg Oxycontin a day to nothing is pretty rough on that patient. Would you slowly decrease his dose or just give him something like 10 mg Percocet, then go down to something even lighter after a few weeks?
In 1991, in Cleveland Ohio’s county jail, at least 10 aids inmates who were on azt and other drugs were not given them at all over a period of a month. They brought a joint lawsuit and lost. I don’t know if I could find it online or search for it, but I will try.
I also knew a woman who was locked up for 2 months in the same place and denied her prescription medication. I’m not making these up.