“Down East Drug Clinic” and “Woman, 71, implicated in sale of methadone” caught my attention in the Sept. 9-10 edition of the Bangor Daily News. Most responsible people accept the fact of a Down East drug epidemic, mostly in prescription opiates which can lead to full-blown heroin use.

A huge failure in reducing these kinds of drugs on the street, in my view, is the fault of the state, the druggists – I mean pharmacists – and the medical profession.

Why, on God’s earth, did any physician prescribe 675 meth-adone pills to this woman for a two-week period? Why didn’t the druggist question the filling of this prescription? Where are the checks and balances promised by the state in reducing the amount of legal prescription drugs being prescribed and sold?

I know personally of two local elderly women who are or have been overprescribed with OxyContin which they won’t use because they have no one supervising their meds. There need to be better checks and balances to keep these and other addictive drugs from being diverted to the streets.

Peter Duston

Cherryfield