Posts Tagged With: substance abuse

Take a moment to scan one or two of these Highly Recommended documents… good background reading for any serious student of the war on docs and the pain crisis. A Critical Assessment of the Impact of Drug Testing Programs on the American Workplace is a good review of this important related drug war topic that is currently in the news (govt push to drug test high school students);
War on Drugs, War on Doctors, and the Pain Crisis in America — this is probably THE CORE document; if you only …

The article well describes the public health chaos this is the predictable consequence of clinical and public health authorities abandoning their real mission to uphold the medical standard of care for their citizenry, and instead focusing exclusively on the policeman’s agenda which prioritizes ‘catching a few addicts’ over providing adequate pain management for legions of innocent patients.

It seems to me an uncivilized and insane notion that just because someone in current moderate to severe pain had a history of an alcohol or drug problem, or even a current substance abuse problem, that you would deny them opioid therapy if that was the best medication to relieve their suffering. But this seems to be a point of confusion that increasingly comes up from patients, doctors, and regulators alike. So, in this post, let me make the medical standard of care in this situation perfectly clear. [...]

This Resource Is an article discusses the failure of the ‘barriers to pain care’ literature to analyze those barriers from an ethical POV. The author relates this to ‘the collective failure of the profession to recognize the ethical implications of undertreated pain.’

In this full text medical journal article, Joranson, in response to Paulozzi (below), describes a basic public health approach to the ‘drug abuse crisis.’ One wonders whether the combined brain power of the NIH, CDC and FDA would not have accomplished this, except for the imperatives of the drug war. Hurwitz 2005 (see below) is an example of the sort of creative analysis we should expect, but never get, from our academic and federal patriarchs.

Purdue Pharma was coerced, under threat of destruction by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), into pleading guilty to charges that their drug was “more addictive” than they had claimed, the government alleging that the company failed to inform both doctors and the public of this information when it came available. The problem for Americans in pain is that this private deal creates, if you will, a “fact” on the public record that is not factual, a “fact” that severely prejudices the interests of patients in pain. [...]

Blog post: Use Your Eyes – Residence Investigation (1960’s police training film); Unknown filmmaker; Unknown creation date. Posted: 2007-08-31. Dopey police training film.

TOC: Intro — Opiophobia and Opioignorance — Risk of Addiction in Chronic Opioid Therapy — Treatment and Outcomes — Undertreatment of Pain is a National Scourge — Footnootes

Innuendo and an ‘investigation’ is all it takes to ruin a doc and cause the abandonment of his patients… Dr. Naramore is obviously no media neophyte, and he gets several important points across very effectively in the article: “The undertreatment of pain is a serious problem in America,” he said. “Physicians are afraid of persecution and prosecution for adequately treating pain. No American should suffer pain.”

John Tierney (”A Taste of His Own Medicine,” column, May 6) hits the nail on the head when he suggests that drug war prosecutions, like those of Rush Limbaugh or Richard Paey, are more for show than for actual enforcement purposes. Unfortunately, these prosecutions also reinforce a medical culture that routinely hardens itself against the anguished pleas of people in serious pain. — An Internet study presented at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society last week in San Antonio, Tex., revealed that while 88 percent of those who visit emergency rooms do so because of out-of-control pain, only …

Prohibita-chloride Really Works. — And now we pause for a moment of enjoyment and laughter. — Thank you to Mr. James Stack for making me aware of Incarcerex, and for making this informative video so easily available to us all, through his website: http://www.jamesstacks.com/ Enjoy!

Letters from medical students in response to Tina Rosenberg’s NY Times Magazine cover “When is a Doctor a Dealer” published in June, 2007. “… [Ms. Rosenberg] is absolutely right – my friends and I in medical school find the pain pathways and significance of pain in illness and treatment terribly interesting, but I can almost guarantee that none of us will ever consider pain management as a specialty for fear of unfair litigation and the government taking away our licenses (and dreams).”

Blog post reviewing the bizarre developments in Salt Lake City in the wake of the federal raid on Dr. Warren Stack. Much effort is being put into registering “addicts” into government clinics. Zero effort has been made, or concern expressed, for the abandoned pain patients who are to be treated as “prescription drug addicts who could turn to heroin at any time” according to the District Attorney.

Wow. “Drug addiction” must be as bad as being “gassed at Aushwitz, slaughtered in Armenia, raped in Rwanda.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. It. Isn’t. Oh how we love to dramatize “addiction.” Everybody is an expert – and exactly to that extent the word and concept have become meaningless. Which doesn’t stop drug war prosecutors putting juries with no medical training in the position of deciding life and death, literally, on the basis of a distinction not even medical experts can make with assurance: the difference between a ‘drug seeker’ and a ‘pain patient.’

Excerpt: “Veterans in chronic pain average less than 4 Percosets a day from the compassionate care-givers of the Veterans Administration… [Such low-potency opioids] are indicated for mild to moderate acute pain, not chronic moderate to severe persistent pain… Oxycodone is a short acting opioid in this preparation, with an effective duration of action of about three hours. One pill every six hours of oxycodone/acetaminophen for chronic pain guarantees that the patient will be in unacceptable pain 50 percent of the time, at best. That’s not treatment, it’s under-treatment; it could not possibly be adequate.”