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The treatment of chronic pain is an issue of national importance. If petitioner’s conviction is allowed to stand then any single opioid prescription can be called into question based upon misconceptions which should not be allowed to permeate the atmosphere of The American Courtroom.

“Given the sweeping nature of the subpoenas here, their chilling effect on First Amendment rights, and the circumstances under which they were obtained – a frustrated prosecutor seeking to silence a dissenting advocate – this Court should quash the subpoenas as an unjustified infringement on Ms. Reynolds’ and PRN’s First Amendment rights,” the ACLU wrote in its pleading.

“I will not be intimidated and I will not be silenced,” said Reynolds, who founded PRN… “As I testified before Congress, an obsession with prescription drug abuse has resulted in the gross under-treatment of pain in this country. We have turned honest physicians and desperate patients into criminals, and policymakers and the public need to hear about it…”

Maybe we all deserve the pain. If we are too stupid to understand that aspirin kills way more people than morphine, and that there are a whole lot worse things for you and your damn Federal prosecutors to worry about than if maybe your neighbor is getting too much pain relief (sheesh!) – if you are that effin stupid then maybe you deserve the chronic pain which YOUR government has already imposed on you and your children as the defacto law of the land.

We keep hearing about how the War on Drugs has failed. But the truth is, the War on Drugs has been tremendously successful, that is if you wanted your country to be a police state, your Congress completely unresponsive to the needs of the people, and your doctors letting you and your loved ones live and die in unnecessary pain.

Shaygan’s attorney Markus discovered that govt prosecutors authorized two witnesses to surreptitiously record conversations with the defense team and attempt to bribe Markus, and failed to disclose that the witnesses were paid, confidential informants for the DEA. U.S. District Judge Gold said there were “flagrant violations” of basic rules by Shaygan’s prosecutors, and that “important safeguards were not met.” An order from Gold is expected in a few weeks.

Wow. To win acquittal on federal drug trafficking charges is very difficult and very rare, as I have [discussed before][rm]. A resounding win is almost unheard of. I will be very interested in the outcome of the prosecutorial misconduct case being brought by Dr. Shaygan’s defense attorney, Mr. Markus.

In pain medicine we have the deeply disturbing situation that what most doctors do (medical community norm) is at odds with, and clearly below, the medical standard of care. Literally, in the treatment of chronic pain, an ethical physician attempting to practice in good faith, according to the clinical literature, is an outlier deviating from how most reputable physicians would practice.

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 …

I am very glad to see physicians, who have themselves been savaged by the government, publishing their stories. Consider Dr. Jackson’s article, Conviction without a Crime, to be a companion piece to Dr. Rottschaefer’s article discussed in the previous item here, The Criminal Criminal Justice System. Together these two articles will give the reader a good sense, I think, of the utter breakdown of professional ethics, common sense, and fairness in any case involving controlled substances.

I came across the article linked to: “Third Circuit Gives New Meaning to Term ‘Criminal Justice System’”, by Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer, himself the victim of federal prosecutor Mary Beth Buchanan in what Radley Balko, who wrote “Sex, Drugs and a Federal Prosecution – The Shabby Case Against Dr. Rottschaefer,” calls “Buchanan’s most outrageous case.” Balko writes: “Since Rottschaefer’s conviction, Buchanan’s case has fallen to pieces, as each of the five witnesses who testified to getting illegal prescriptions from Rottschaefer have since been shown to have lied. Buchanan refuses to reopen the case.”

criticisms and description of federal prosecutorial behavior rings true to me from my experience and knowledge of war on docs/pain crisis cases. Our justice system is withering, ‘the drugs exception to the Bill of Rights’ has gone from being a tragic lawyers joke to business as usual, and we now routinely apply asset forfeiture and RICO laws, intended by Congress to combat drug cartels, to individual pain-treating physicians. Doctors and sick people are easy, profitable prey for law enforcement and federal prosecutors pandering to the electorate through a media willing to be exploited for their share of the spoils.

There are so many who need opioid pain medications and can not get them… These people have their lives destroyed every day as they drag themselves from doctor to doctor being lied to, verbally and sometimes physically abused, forced into unnecessary rounds of expensive testing… They are sneered at by pharmacists, called addicts by doctors, drug tested, called “frequent-flyers” and other derogatory names by emergency room nurses and doctors, denied reimbursement…

Article from PascoTribune, including video interview of Paey, about Paey’s readjustment to live out of prison as a pardoned chronic pain patient. Permalink:

Update on the case of USA v Dr. Martinez in Washington state. Martinez has been acquitted of all drug crime charges. The fraud charges remaining after her 2007 fed trial have also been dismissed, but the govt can bring the fraud charges anew. Also examined is a recent Yakima Herald article announcing “new” charges that are not, in any reality-based sense, “new” at all.