Ronald Fraser of the DKT liberty project writes on the DEA’s anti-opioid campaign:

In March 2004, DEA administrator Karen Tandy told Congress her drug warriors have “been successful in addressing OxyContin diversion as evidenced by a reduction in the rate of increase of OxyContin prescriptions being written and a leveling-off of OxyContin sales.”

For DEA, the fewer pain-relief prescriptions written, the better. This cockeyed measure of success makes no sense because experts estimate the pain experienced by 40 percent of cancer, AIDS and terminally ill patients is not treated adequately.

It also betrays the DEA’s public position on this issue, which is an acknowledgement that chronic pain is severely undertreated, and a promise that its crackdown won’t undermine efforts to make treatment more available.

Tandy’s testimony to Congress is actually a rare moment of candor from the agency. This campaign isn’t about limiting abuse. It’s about limiting use.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 6th, 2005 at 10:45 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.