NYTimes
By Anemona Hartocollis
January 10, 2013

Some of the most common and most powerful prescription painkillers on the market will be restricted sharply in the emergency rooms at New York City’s 11 public hospitals, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday in an effort to crack down on what he called a citywide and national epidemic of prescription drug abuse.

Under the new city policy, most public hospital patients will no longer be able to get more than three days’ worth of narcotic painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet. Long-acting painkillers, including OxyContin, a familiar remedy for chronic backache and arthritis, as well as Fentanyl patches and methadone, will not be dispensed at all. And lost, stolen or destroyed prescriptions will not be refilled.

City officials said the policy was aimed at reducing the growing dependency on painkillers and preventing excess amounts of drugs from being taken out of medicine chests and sold on the street or abused by teenagers and others who want to get high.

(excerpted)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/nyregi...tml?hp&_r=1&;

This is only happening at the Public Hospitals or in other words, where the filthy poor go. Nanny Doomberg and his Upper East Side denizens won't be effected by this in the least. Just as it should be.

BTW. The residents of the welfare state inside a welfare state of NYC deserve every one of these regulations they get stuck with.