Excerpts from Cato Institute Analysis *: "the government is waging an aggressive, intemperate, unjustified war on pain doctors."."By demonizing physicians as drug dealers and exaggerating the health risk of pain management, the federal government has made physicians scapegoats for the failed drug war. Even worse, the Drug Enforcement Administration's renewed war on pain doctors has frightened many physicians out of pain management altogether, exacerbating an already serious health crisis--the widespread undertreatment of intractable pain intractable pain Refractory pain Pain medicine Persistent pain which does not respond to at least 3 dosease of parenteral analgesics given over a 12-24 hr period; pain that does not respond to appropriate doses of opioid analgesics. ." "Experts agree that tens of millions of Americans suffer from undertreated or untreated pain ... According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. one 1999 survey, just one in four pain patients received treatment adequate to alleviate suffering." "The medical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that when administered properly, opioid therapy rarely, if ever, results in 'accidental addiction' or opioid abuse." "Pain specialists make an important distinction between patients who depend on opiates Opiates Analgesic, pain killing drugs, such as heroin and morphine that depress the central nervous system. Mentioned in: Withdrawal Syndromes to function normally--to get out of bed, tend to household chores, and hold down jobs--and addicts who take drugs for euphoria, and whose lifestyles deteriorate as a result of taking opiates, instead of improving. The DEA DEA - Data Encryption Algorithm makes no such distinction." "The relationship between a doctor and his patient is crucial to the proper assessment and treatment of the patient's condition. The DEA's aggressive investigative procedure poisons the doctor-patient relationship doctor-patient relationship, n in-teraction between a physician and a patient. from both sides." "The DEA continues to lower its evidentiary standards, making it nearly impossible for many doctors to determine what is and isn't permitted." "Large quantities of narcotics narcotics n. 1) techinically, drugs which dull the senses. 2) a popular generic term for drugs which cannot be legally possessed, sold, or transported except for medicinal uses for which a physician or dentist's prescription is required. routinely go missing en route from manufacturers to wholesalers and from wholesalers to retailers. The DEA itself acknowledges this problem. Given the poor job the DEA is doing of monitoring the narcotics it's charged with overseeing ... DEA's attempt to blame physicians for the drugs' street availability seems arbitrary, unjustified, and capricious." www.CommonSenseForDrugPolicy.org www.ManagingChronicPain.org www.DrugWarFacts.org H. Michael Gray For other people named Michael Gray, see . Michael Gray (born August 3, 1974 in Sunderland, United Kingdom), sometimes known as Micky Gray, is an English football player who plays for Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C. as a full-back. He wears the number 33 shirt for the club. , Chair; Robert E. Field, Co-Chair * "Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The DEA's War on Prescription Painkillers" by Professor Ronald T. Libby, June 16, 2005. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa545.pdf |
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