LAWMEN VS. THE DRUG WARRIORS

Attorneys general seek change in DEA policy.

For months, full-page advertisements challenging government policy
toward pain management doctors have been appearing in national magazines.

"The government is waging an aggressive, intemperate, unjustified war
on pain doctors," the headline on one ad says. It goes on to quote
from a study published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian "think
tank" in Washington:

"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 treatment of intractable pain.
Experts agree that tens of millions of Americans suffer from
undertreated or untreated pain ... according to one 1999 survey, just
one in four pain patients received treatment adequate to alleviate
suffering." The ad was placed by Common Sense for Drug Policy, a
"drug reform"organization.

Another ad, placed by the same group, quoted from a Jan. 19, 2005,
letter to the DEA signed by 30 attorneys general: "We, the
undersigned Attorneys General, "We have learned that adequate pain
management is often difficult to obtain because many physicians fear
investigations and enforcement actions if they prescribe adequate
levels of opioids or have many patients with prescriptions for pain
medications. We are working to address these concerns while ensuring
that individuals who do divert or abuse drugs are prosecuted ... "

One of the signers of the letter was Arkansas Attorney General Mike
Beebe, who is now a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial
nomination. A Beebe spokesman had little to say about the letter
except that it grew out of discussions within the National
Association of Attorneys General, a common occurrence, and that three
attorneys general had been in the forefront of drafting the letter
and seeking support. One of those was Oklahoma Attorney General Drew
Edmondson. (Beebe might not be so willing to join with Edmondson
today. In June, Edmondson, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit against
Arkansas poultry plants, accusing them of polluting streams that flow
into Oklahoma. Beebe said the suit was improper and asked the U.S.
Supreme Court to stop it. Edmondson said Beebe was carrying water for
corporate polluters.)

Edmondson, Maryland Attorney General Joe Curran and Vermont Attorney
General Bill Sorrell met with DEA Administrator Karen Tandy in April.
Neither side has given a full accounting of the meeting. Rogene Waite
of the DEA public affairs office in Washington said the meeting was
"excellent and positive" and suggested that further questions be
submitted to the attorneys general. Edmondson said in a news release
that he and the other attorneys general had spoken "openly and
frankly" about the pain management issue: "Many physicians have
expressed a reluctance to prescribe needed dosages of pain
medications because they fear DEA prosecution." He didn't describe
Tandy's response, but he concluded, "I think this meeting in the very
least puts us on the road to finding workable solutions."

On the road, perhaps, but not very far down it, sounds like.

Mike Beebe's likely opponent in the 2006 gubernatorial election is
former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, who is seeking the Republican
nomination. Hutchinson is a former head of the DEA. Asked his
reaction to the letter from the attorneys general to the DEA,
Hutchinson said that as he read it, the letter was calling for a
return to a DEA policy that was adopted in 2003. Hutchinson, who left
the DEA in January 2003, said that policy was an outgrowth of his
negotiations with pain-management physicians who said they were
reluctant to prescribe drugs because they feared the DEA. "We
recognized their position, and they recognized the importance of the
role of the DEA in preventing diversion." (Diversion is the illegal
sale of drugs by people who obtained the drugs legally from
physicians.) Hutchinson said that if his reading was correct, he had
no quarrel with the letter or with Beebe for signing it.

The letter does indeed speak favorably of the 2003 policy and
unfavorably of a DEA policy statement issued in November 2004 that
"emphasizes enforcement, and seems likely to have a chilling effect
on physicians engaged in the legitimate practice of medicine."

Anything that has a chilling effect on physicians who prescribe pain
drugs will have an even more chilling effect on their patients. And,
as in all such matters, it is the people at the bottom of the
economic ladder who get chilled the most. A University of Michigan
Health System study published in October 2005 found that patients in
minority and low-income neighborhoods were much more likely to lack
access to pain medications than patients in whiter and more
prosperous neighborhoods.

The war on drugs has many casualties. And they're all people, not drugs.