More evidence of drugs’ illegal, addictive hold

We recently highlighted the disturbing lengths that one individual went to meet the unbridled demand for illegal drugs, no matter how deadly.

It involved a Lowell man just sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for dealing fentanyl, a synthetic substance far more potent than heroin.

And where did he do his addictive business? From his own home — and an elderly housing complex in Methuen, where a resident allowed him the use of his coveted, subsidized home.

In return for cash, drugs? We can only speculate.

But a far more reprehensible example of how the need for drugs can erode morality to the point of betraying a sacred trust played out with the sentencing of a former VA hospice nurse who admitted to diverting and tampering with morphine used to provide pain relief to dying veterans for her own use.

Tewksbury resident Kathleen Noftle, 55, who worked at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Bedford, received a 40-month federal prison sentence last week after admitting in court last October that she mixed water with a portion of the liquid pain medication morphine that she then administered to her unsuspecting, vulnerable patients.

Noftle then ingested the diluted amount of the remaining drug, according to a Department of Justice press release.

Arrested and charged in September 2019, Noftle’s criminal acts occurred over a three-day period in January 2017. According to federal agents, one patient — whose wristband Noftle is said to have scanned to give the appearance that a proper dose of morphine was administered — was found in distress 30 minutes after Noftle’s shift ended. The patient died the next day.

How could a few hits of a watered-down pain medication be worth putting the lives of her helpless patients in jeopardy, because they’d soon meet their end anyway?

While we’ve made progress in this war to stem and treat drug addiction, these incidents make the case that far more work needs to be done.