DEA pressure keeps doctors from alleviating the suffering of legitimate pain victims.
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October 6, 2014
DEA tightens access to some painkillers
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Why put further restrictions on the prescription and dispensing of lawful, regulated pain medications at the doctor's office and the pharmacy if DHS has no intention of locking down the traffic in illicit narcotics through the open door at the southwestern border?

Does reducing the amount of pain medications prescribed and dispensed legally somehow justify or balance out the amount of contraband narcotics that enters the country illegally?

How many pill bottles which contain one/tenth of a gram of hydrσcσdσne or σxycσdσne (a nominal "four week's supply") will it take to offset one backpack of illegal σpiates toted or floated in by a drug mule?

How much pain and suffering inflicted upon legitimate patients by withholding their pain meds does it take to put the hurt on the drug cartels? If anything, that increases cartel revenues.

______A letter to Congress___________

Dear Representative _________,
Dear Senator __________,
Dear Senator __________,

There are many doctors who label their patients unfairly, who demean and degrade these patients, and who write them off as drug addicts because they are victims of chronic, lifelong pain.

This is archaic medicine, rather akin to torture, and it does more harm than words alone can communicate. Intimidated by government regulators, physicians are afraid to treat patients who suffer from pain. The DEA targets pain medication prescribers and instills fear in them regarding how they choose to treat their patients and what they choose to prescribe. More and more, doctors are refusing to treat their patients who have chronic pain — or dumping them on the scrap heap of humanity. Far too often, other doctors judge such untreated or under-treated patients and castoffs to be "Malingering" or "Doctor Shopping."

In many too many cases, doctors refuse to even communicate with these pain victims, labeling them as Long Term Drug Users (LTDUs) or Non-compliant Patients (NCPs). This unfair, negligent, and harmful health "care" (non-care, anti-care) causes lifelong damage — physically, socially, emotionally, mentally, financially, even spiritually:
"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Pain adversely affects marriages, family, friends, and co-workers, and it often causes the sufferer to retract from society or from life altogether. Through no fault of their own, these patients may withdraw from daily activities with their spouses, family and friends, or they may be cast aside or cast out against their wills.

Putting primary care physicians out of their primary business of alleviating suffering forces these pain victims into back door alleyways, store front pain clinics, so-called "unlicensed pharmacists" on street corners selling illegal drugs, and worse. (Yes, there is worse.) There they receive no counseling on how to take their medications, and often they don't even know what they are taking. By treating pain victims this way, antiquated and unenlightened legal attitudes force sufferers to seek help and relief outside of the law, making criminals out of law-abiding citizens.

Targeting illegal clinics is an eminently worthwhile mission.

Feds, NYPD bust $550 MILLION Oxycodone drug ring

Legal drugs, Deadly outcomes

Florida raids target sellers of pain pills

Husband & Wife Physicians Convicted of Medicare Fraud

But it is another issue entirely to target legitimate physicians who should be allowed to treat their pain patients without interference, and with the least regulation necessary to keep doctor-patient transactions on the up and up. Instead, physicians' fear of prescribing pain medication compels them to send their patients away to some unknown pain clinic, where the patient is equally unknown and suffers yet more humiliating labeling, discrimination, and neglect. Pharmacists often feel the need to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and to embarrass patients when they pick up their pain meds, treating them like third class human beings or no class garbage.

Why are doctors no longer treating the 'Whole Patient?" Is it just that financial constraints have tightened? Why do doctors address less and less the underlying causes of chronic pain? There are many instances where pain has NO clear cause, but that does not mean that the pain doesn't exist or that it is just psychosomatic, only that a trustworthy diagnosis is currently unavailable. Pain receptors malfunction. Injuries can cause pain years later.

Doctors sometimes tell their elderly patients who suffer every remaining day of their lives, "I am concerned about a possible addiction." What happens to the quality of their lives? Their only option may be to consider suicide. What happens to their right to life not cut short by debilitating pain? The damage is horrific. Many of the elderly commit suicide and terminate their lives rather than live with interminable pain.

From the very beginning of medical school, physicians are taught that any patient requesting pain medication is to be "Scrutinized", and that physicians must be especially "Wary" of patients who say that they can't take anti-inflammatory drugs, because such a statement is a sure "Sign" of addiction. Some med schools actually have a class for new doctors on how NOT to treat patients, such as, "What to watch out for when a patient requests help with their pain."

No matter what new restrictions federal regulators apply to the prescribing and dispensing of pain medications, the unintended consequence is that the government pressure intimidates doctors to restrict providing appropriate, compassionate, and legal pain relief for legitimate pain sufferers - the elderly and the dying, the injured and the incurably ill, the afflicted and the broken.

That sounds like the government.