DEA Oversight Hearings: July 12, 2007

House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, to Hold Hearings on DEA Oversight, July 12, 2007; Siobhan Reynolds; War on Doctors/Pain Crisis; Pain Relief Network; 2007-06-29.

Dear Friends,

The House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, will be holding hearings on DEA oversight Thursday, July 12, 2007. As a result of my visit to Washington, DC in early June, the recent New York Times Magazine Cover article, and the assistance of many good friends on and around Capitol Hill, I have been invited to represent the pain issue. The House staffer we are working with is developing the roster and we are supplying her some excellent suggestions for patients, doctors, and lawyers from whom to request testimony. There will be a couple of other issues represented but it seems that our issue will be solidly featured.

This is a huge opportunity for the Pain Relief Network (PRN) to make a strong showing. We will be calling on all pain patients, and those who care about this issue to make it to Washington on July 12th, 2007, for this important Congressional hearing. We are also asking everyone who has a pain management story to tell, or an informed opinion to offer regarding the pain crisis in America, that they deliver it to their Congressional representative prior to the hearing so that it may be entered into the Congressional record.
[Find your Representative by zipcode]

To the defense lawyers, state regulators and state prosecutors who have benefitted from the Pain and Social Policy listServ, or the websites of PRN (including this blog and doctordeluca.com), or other consultation with PRN, if you would be so kind as to write up your view of what has happened here, as it concerned your clients and their patients and families, or how it has changed the way you view your situation, and send it to your representative, and copy us at info@painreliefnetwork.org. That would be a really helpful thing to do. If you need to write down hours billed, you can donate the hours to Pain Relief Network. A large influx of specific complaints regarding the DEA/DOJ’s abuse of authority would be most helpful here. (I think federal abuse of their administrative function by way of the ’softening up’ the defendant, as well as pretrial asset forfeiture, would probably be the most egregious offenses from the Congress’s pov).

We hope that we have the opportunity to get enough of the real story out there that we can roll these hearings into real reform - the goal is to get the DEA/DOJ out of the business of prosecuting doctors for prescribing legal medicines. The states can take care of that through their medical boards and through state prosecutions. Moreover, should the people of a state find that the state is acting to suppress the management of pain, they can organize against the government’s behavior and change it.

The fact that we have been successful at the state level but so dramatically unsuccessful at the Federal level is a powerful indicator that it is the application of Federal power that determines outcome. The problem here has been that we could not get any response from DEA. As the police force of the executive, they are insulated from popular criticism and democratic change, and unresponsive to the problem of deteriorating access to standard-of-care pain management for people suffering chronic pain which is directly related to their policy and actions.

Let’s keep the focus on what is wrong here and on what we all know has happened to good people, both doctors and patients, under this reign of terror.

Please write or call with any questions. Thank you,

Siobhan Reynolds
President, PRN
(505) 989-3929
www.painreliefnetwork.org

The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough. — Simone Weil