Crisis in the Heartland

Older farmers are at high risk for injury when they
stop taking prescribed pain medications, shows a study done in part
by the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

A case review of farmers aged 66 and older in Alberta, Canada, revealed
some previously unknown relationships may exist between the use of pain
medications and subsequent injury. For instance, when farmers stopped
taking prescribed pain or anti-inflammatory medications within the 30
days prior to the date of injury, there was a higher risk of getting
hurt while working on the farm. The injuries included falls, being struck
by an object, or wounds inflicted while working with farm machinery or
livestock

Researchers were able to identify several possible reasons for this,
said Dr. Don Voaklander, one of the study’s authors and a professor of
Public Health Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
Queens University also worked on the study.

"The first is that pain, unmasked when they stop using medication,
distracts the farmer when he’s doing his work. This means less attention
to the
task at hand. A second possibility involves limitations on mobility for
farmers who are in pain or who are guarding their movements as a result
of pain." Third, those who use pain medication may be experiencing
withdrawal symptoms that again may be distracting in a dynamic work environment.

from the University
of Alberta via Eureka

Fourth,
they have been junkified by previous exposures to the point that they
are, consciously or subconsciously, engaging in behavior likely to
result in injury leading to renewed access to narcotics. A typical
junkie scam,
no doubt related to the explosion of Oxycontin abuse in rural America.
Only a lack of rigorous control of Agro-pharmaceuticals has prevented
the exposure of related widespread rural abuse of bovine tranquilizers.
America’s farms are a festering focus of drug abuse…..