Blame It On the Pained

I'm too edgy tonight to post much, but Talk Left has an interesting link up to yet another article on the absurdity of this war on some drugs and users. The DEA has now declared war on prescription drug consumers.

Maybe the DEA thinks they have the right to dictate the practice of medicine because they have arrested so many terminally ill cannabis users in their hospital beds and wheelchairs that they feel like MDs. Now that the 9th Circuit has thwarted that easy target with its recent decisions, Karen Tandy has stopped attacking marijuana as a medicine long enough to announce on Monday that her drug dogs will now be sniffing out chronic pain patients who take too many legal medicines to relieve their suffering.

Not content to intimidate the doctors and pharmacists from providing adequate and clinically appropriate dosages with irrational prosecutions of practitioners, Karen is now trying to incarcerate the patients who would seek to ease their constant pain by seeking the prescriptions. Another class of easy targets for Ms. Tandy to exploit in building these misleading statistics to justify prohibition policies and her own political existence. Meanwhile it's the innocent, as always, who will suffer.

Pain doctors and some advocates for patients with chronic pain say the government is overzealous, creating a "chilling effect" that keeps many doctors from prescribing painkillers. They argue that many patients in pain are not getting the drugs.

"Doctors who prescribe opioids for pain are becoming increasingly intimidated by the government's targeting of legitimate medicine," said Siobhan Reynolds, an advocate with the Pain Relief Network. "We implore our elected representatives to put the needs of ill Americans ahead of the reckless demands of misguided and self-serving government bureaucracies."

Meanwhile our chief drug czar also issued his annoucement to mark this week's White House press blitz on drug control. I found this statement particularly telling in light of my recent post on RFID tagging of prescription medication. It all fits into the prohibitionists plan to monitor and control your personal sovereignty.

Walters said the government wants to increase from 20 to 31 the number of states that have "prescription monitoring programs," which can detect individuals who are redeeming prescriptions for controlled drugs from multiple doctors and can highlight suspicious prescriptions.

Does anyone actually think that the kingpins of black market pharmaceuticals get their supplies by doctor shopping? The big dealers get their stuff before it gets to the warehouses. The only effect of this new policy is a few small time addicts may be caught and a lot of information about the state of law abiding citizen's health will be gained in this insidious little data mining project. And all too many legitimate patients will suffer from our government induced unavailability of qualified practitioners to treat their injury.