newsflash. . . when people are poor and their government abandons them (both the elderly and the addicts in this awful, sad story), they do things to keep themselves meagerly afloat.

Police: Elderly sell pain pills for cash

Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown in jail, imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by the concrete and steel around her.
The woman -- who spent two days in jail after her arrest last December -- is among a growing number of Kentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a crime authorities say is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling their painkillers and other medications to addicts.
"When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for $10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries," Floyd County jailer Roger Webb said.

from what the county jailer says, it certainly seems like these are the people our government needs to be spending its time cracking down on.
i'm just disgusted and ashamed, really. nothin' left to say 'bout that.