Today, millions of Americans
live in chronic pain, without adequate access to prescription pain medications, because
their doctors are too afraid of being harassed or even arrested by the Drug
Enforcement Administration to prescribe sufficient doses. Everyone agrees that doctors should not be
using their positions to supply addicts with narcotics or feed the illicit drug
market. Many doctors, however, have been
arrested or threatened with loss of their medical licenses simply for
prescribing opiate-based pain medications in doses that federal drug authorities
believe are too high.

Of course, the small number of doctors who have abused
their prescription authority should be held accountable. However, when it is too easy to single out
doctors simply for prescribing certain types of pain medicines, the result is
what we are seeing now: Many of America’s
best doctors simply will not prescribe these medicines, or will not prescribe
sufficient doses. That leaves thousands
of Americans without an adequate remedy for their chronic pain, and it often
destroys the lives of doctors who simply want to provide the best possible care
to their patients. The Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons has documented several
examples of prosecutorial abuse involved in the politics of pain. Consider the following:

• Dr.
  Robert Weitzel of Utah was convicted of negligent homicide, but then
  acquitted in a new trial after the prosecutor was found to have concealed
  exculpatory evidence. The jury
  needed only a few hours of deliberation to find him not guilty. Nevertheless, Weitzel was sent to federal
  prison based on an unrelated admission of a record-keeping violation.
• Dr.
  Deborah Bordeaux of South Carolina was convicted under a “drug kingpin”
  statute carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years, after working a
  mere two months in a locum tenens
  position – that is, temporarily filling in for another doctor – treating
  chronic pain and other ailments.
• Dr.
  Jeri Hassman of Arizona, who had the largest pain practice in Tucson, was
  threatened with a 28-year prison term on 362 criminal counts, apparently
  because a small fraction of her patients used the prescriptions in
  unauthorized ways. Federal prosecutors
  called her “a drug dealer with a pen.”
  Dr. Hassman, a single mother with two children, had little choice
  but to be pragmatic and accept a plea agreement on four counts of failing
  to notify authorities that patients had admitted using other family
  members’ prescription drugs. She
  was sentenced to two years of probation, but had her practice destroyed
  and her reputation maligned by the federal government.
• Dr. William Hurwitz of Virginia was convicted and had
  all his property seized, even though his pain practices were under the careful
  supervision of the state medical board, which believed all his prescriptions
  were written in good faith. Dr. Hurwitz
  was initially sentenced to four 25-year sentences and forty-six 15-year
  sentences, and he was fined more than $1 million. His conviction was overturned on appeal
  because the trial judge had prevented the jury from considering Hurwitz’s defense.
  After a second trial, in 2007, Dr.
  Hurwitz was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison despite the judge’s
  conclusion that most of his practice was legitimate medicine that saved
  patients’ lives, and that medical literature increasingly supports Hurwitz’s theories
  on the propriety of large drug doses to treat patients in chronic pain.

Although the pain and damage caused by prescription drug abuse are real, the insufficient treatment of chronic pain has destroyed lives and livelihoods.  It is time to reconsider America’s tragic war on prescription pain medication.