War on Doctors Prosecutors’ Cheat Sheet
The War on Doctors Prosecutors’ Cheat Sheet; Alex DeLuca; War on Doctors/Pain Crisis blog of the Pain Relief Network; 2007-07-06.
This is a gift for you all. Law students might be particularly interested, I think; pass it on to a law student you love.
I want you all to download this PDF file: Prescription Drug Diversion Prosecutions – Quick Reference Card 2002 (PDF), print it out, have it laminated, and bring it with you when you attend the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime Hearings on DEA Oversight, Thursday, July 12, 2007, in Washington D.C. It’ll come in handy as a fan if the day is hot, or if you happen across an auction.
Tina Rosenberg, in her 2007-06-17 cover story for the New York Times Magazine, When is a Doctor a Drug Pusher?, makes direct reference to the Cheat Sheet in the following paragraphs excerpted from that article. It really is fascinating in a stomach-turning sort of way. Enjoy!
“The D.E.A. claims that it is not criminalizing bad medical decisions. For a prosecutable case, Caverly, the D.E.A. officer, told me: “I need there to be no connection of the drug with a legitimate medical condition. I need the doctor to have prescribed the drug in exchange for an illegal drug, or sex, or just sold the prescription or wrote prescriptions for patients they have never seen, or made up a name.”
“I read this statement to Jennifer Bolen, a former federal prosecutor in drug-diversion cases who trained other prosecutors and now advises doctors on the law. “That’s a good goal,” she said. “I don’t think they have yet reached that goal.” McIver’s case had no such broken connection, and in many cases the government has not produced testimony of intent to push drugs, providing evidence only of negligence or recklessness.
“In 2002, Bolen was one of the authors of a Justice Department document intended as part of a basic guide to prosecuting drug-diversion cases. The document, in the form of a reference card, dispenses with any need for a broken connection. It suggests that prosecutors need not prove a doctor had bad motives, that to be within the law a doctor had to prescribe “in strict compliance with generally accepted medical guidelines” and that doing an abbreviated medical history or physical examination is “probative” of lack of a legitimate medical purpose.
“The reference card was on the Justice Department’s Web site but was pulled, according to the Pain Relief Network, which provided the card to me. Bolen told me: “I have no problem saying that if the card was all there was, it was not acceptable. But it isn’t all there was.” She described the card as one piece of a more thorough training, but added that many prosecutors followed its theories.” [emphasis added]
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