Dr. Volkman: Why DEA Goes After Pain Docs
Why DEA Goes After Pain Doctors (Source); Paul H. Volkman, M.D., Ph.D.; Comment in Response to: Opening Salvos in the Hurwitz Trial; John Tierney; TiernayLab; NYTimes; 2007-04-01.
I am a pain doctor who, like Hurwitz, has had his license revoked and his money seized by the DEA. Unlike, Hurwitz, I have not been indicted for criminal charges. [But see this blog: Speak Out Against the DEA in April - Get Indicted in May] I have always been extremely careful to make sure my patients needed and actually took pain medicine I prescribed for them, dismissing patients whose drug tests indicated they were not actually taking all of their medicine. I attempted to give my pain patients the doses of medicine they appeared to need and carefully monitored them to see that they took it. As far as I could determine, I never broke any law at any time.
That did not stop the DEA from attacking me and putting me out of the practice of medicine. My appeal of these DEA actions can be read on the Pain Relief Network website under Clinical Litigation. All of the comments on this blog have basicly said: How can the DEA be so wrongheaded and callous in their treatment of pain patients and pain doctors? The real question is: Why does the DEA try to put every doctor out of action who is willing to prescribe real pain medicine to legitimate pain patients?
By the govt’s own statistics, 95% of pain medicine sold on the street got there after theft from warehouses, trucks and pharmacies, not from bad prescriptions from bad doctors. So why the vicious DEA campaign against doctors? It wont save us all from the evils of drug addiction. In fact, the DEA is a vicious, criminal organization, corrupt from top to bottom. In fact, the DEA has no desire to stop drug diversion. In fact, the DEA fosters and controls drug diversion, taking a healthy cut of the cash flow from the sale of illegal drugs on the street. The DEA brings bogus charges and stages sham trials to cover up their own criminal role, and to put doctors out of business.
Pain doctors, after all, make it possible for patients to obtain pain medicine legally from pharmacies, instead of having to buy it on the street, thus taking business away from the DEA. Putting away a few doctors in highly publicized cases scares away the rest of the doctors from prescribing pain medicine. As abhorrent as my explanation is, because it indicates the widespread corruption of your United States government, it is the only one which explains the behavior of the DEA and accounts for all of the obvious facts.
– Paul H. Volkman, M.D., Ph.D. (Pharmacology and Toxicology)
ADDENDUM #1; 2007-04-02.
One of my patients, a former policeman hurt in a squad car accident and subjected to 3 failed back surgeries, told me he had to spend $1000 a month buying pain medicine on the street.
50 million patients at 1000/month is a black market worth more than $300 billion per year, which dwarfs the amount of money the govt claims is spent on cocaine or heroin or meth.
The real money is in keeping doctors from prescribing pain medicine so all those pain patients will have to buy it from a sanctioned DEA source on the street corner. I’d like to see 100 pain patients write in about whether they buy on the street and how much they spend.
– Posted by Paul H Volkman, M.D., Ph.D.
ADDENDUM #2; 2007-04-02.
The Ryan-Haite proposed bill could properly be characterized as a Haite Crime.
According to the Supreme Court in Gonzales v Oregon, the federal government and the DEA in particular, have no business or authority to regulate the practice of medicine, which is specifically left to the states by the Controlled Substances Act and by the US Constitution. There is no legal basis for the DEA to put internet pharmacies (see United Prescription Services) or the largest US distributor of veterinary medicines (see Wedgewood Pharmacy) out of business by defining what they do as illegal, which are determinations to be left to the states the businesses are licensed in, which had no complaints about the companies.
The DEA knows they have taken blatantly illegal and unconstitutional actions against these companies, but do not care, since their only object is to put these companies out of business, if only for a few years until the cases grind through the system. This is their goal, of course, because any legitimate distributor of controlled substances takes away from the DEA’s cut of street drugs. So far, the DEA and its parent DOJ have not had to pay for this lawless behavior. But as the courts start to connect the dots and the Democrats start some investigations, things can change.
The DEA will always be able to point to individuals who have conned a doctor or used fake IDs to obtain medicine from an Internet pharmacy as a justification for legal action against the victims of their scheme. Even if they have to resort to using undercover DEA agents, like they sent to my office in a clumsy, obvious attempt to entrap me into giving them prescriptions “for no valid medical purpose”.
It is time for the courts to step up and call an abrupt halt to these massive abuses of the legal system by the DOJ and DEA to further their own criminal enterprise and meanwhile destroy the lives of doctors, businessmen, pharmacists and of course, pain patients.
– Paul H. Volkman, M.D., Ph.D. (Pharmacology and Toxicology)
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Tags: author=deluca, chilling effect, dea, diversion, drug policy, ethics, govt misconduct, persecuted physicians, public health, statistics
Comment by James Stacks
In response to: Dr. Volkman: Why DEA Goes After Pain Docs; Why DEA Goes After Pain Doctors (Source); Paul H. Volkman, M.D., Ph.D.; Comment in Response to: Opening Salvos in the Hurwitz Trial; John Tierney; TiernayLab; NYTimes; 2007-04-01.
Regarding the motives for the war on pain meds, there may be other explanations. The motivations, of course, should be studied thoroughly — perhaps with the help of economics and government experts, as well as other professionals who have the expertise and tools to do more than speculate. My speculation is a little more complex, but I think your explanation has some appeal, too. It is common knowledge that there is a history of corruption in drug enforcement. Driving up demand and prices by cutting off other sources would make a lot of sense. Using contraband laws to generate and enrich black markets has a long history, and your explanation is defintely not out of the running. But I don’t think low-level corruption of that type would drive such a massive policy effort, which obviously comes from very highly placed policy decisions. I think larger political/economic forces are at work — BIG money. Since this administration has proven it’s overall governing philosophy to be the selling of government influence to big corporate buyers, I think I have a better idea. My guess is that this war is the political will of the pharmaceutical corporations — to stamp out opioids because they cannot patent them. This creates a lot of pain, and a lot of medicating with expensive (patented) NSAIDS. The chronic untreated pain creates a lot of complaints, a lot of office visits, and a lot of prescriptions written in an effort to find a solution. Palliative care for chronic pain cuts into their profits, so they are adjusting their market through political manipulation. Just a thought. More work is needed in this area. I even have a way that I can force the recent Purdue Oxycontin case to fit this model — without a long stretch of imagination. If my explanation doesn’t make any medical sense, I would surely like to know that and know why before I spend any more time on it.