I Want Revenge ... NYTIMES Article

[sighthound]

Basket, I am absolutely against a backstretch drugstore, simply from the \"no open market\" perspective.   It will go broke with only track vets as clients, too, I guarantee you.  

Jerry - the idea (not you ) is ridiculous, bizzare and completely unworkable.  You need to go drive the backstretch with a few vets.

1-- Cars-- vets would park in a restricted area. When they leave that area they are supposed to be carrying no drugs, if they are caught with anything in their posession it\'s a violation.

First, my vehicle needs to be driven barn to barn, all over the backstretch - it carries everything I need, including my office, stockroom, pharmacy and assistant, and the contents are not portable.

You want me to leave my drug-filled truck on the backstretch, even if it was locked, and locked within a fenced-in, guarded area?  No way.  Sorry, my medical license nor my insurer doesn\'t and won\'t cover that potential for break-in or stolen drug abuse!   And I need that truck off-track for farm calls after the morning is done.

2-- Yeah, the problem is illegal drugs. Welcome to the party. The idea is to make sure vets don\'t bring them on track disguised as legal drugs.

This won\'t do anything at all to change that.  All a vet has to do is hold onto an empty furosemide vial, and fill it with an illegal drug brought in via a hidden syringe.  Vets that want to cheat do that now.  Limiting the supplier won\'t change that.

3-- The track would have to give you an area where you could store legal drugs you buy on track so you don\'t have to run to buy them as needed. My guess is a locker and a fridge with combo locks would do it.

Except that won\'t work - I practice barn to barn, and drugs being back in a central location, a specified storage space on the backstretch won\'t do me any good.  They need to be in my working vehicle, going barn to barn with me.

The vet works out of his truck.  The truck is the central storage space.  There are provisions for tracks to be able to conduct searches of a vet\'s truck and person right now.  That is all that needs to be done.
 

4-- There can certainly be exceptions made and protocols set up for life threatening and other unusual situations. For example, if you notify someone the track could probably have security meet you and observe.

 If I answer my phone and a trainer is screaming his good filly is down with tying-up two barns over, there\'s not any time to run and get a drug from my locker, or call security to \"come observe\".  Observe what?  What do a bunch of $10/hour security guards know about what I need to do medically to the horse, and with what?  And I sure as hell am not going to stand by and do nothing until some approved state vet shows up on the scene.

5-- Physical searches now require testing of anything found. This would not. If you have anything AT ALL not bought at the track pharmacy, you\'re gone.

Sorry.  You can\'t dictate to me what brands of drugs I am allowed to select from, what the drug catalog contains, and limit me to one supplier, and whatever charge they care to charge me.  

The issues that are trickier involve OTHER people carrying the drugs for the vets. They can be dealt with too.

Another completely absurd idea.

Let this idea go - it\'s a complete loser.

[TGJB]

You know, I was going to drop this. HOWEVER--

1-- No way you leave it in a guarded area? Fine. You\'re not working here.

2-- Make them return the empty vials.

3-- Nobody said you couldn\'t take the drugs out of your locker and carry them around from barn to barn. Assuming it really is necessary to work out of your truck, the way to do this would be instead of using a parking to toss a percentage of all trucks entering every day.

4-- The point was that in an emergency you would NOT have to go to your locker or the pharmacy, you could bring whatever you need. You would have to call security to observe either before or as soon as possible. They would NOT have to know anything about medicine, just to observe that you were there administering to a horse that was in distress. Nobody will be concerned about you giving illegal drugs to a horse that is not about to race.

5-- There is no reason to restrict it to one brand, but the answer is yes, they can do that, they can do anything they want. Ask the courts. You don\'t like it, work somewhere else.