Remember, this is not a “campaign against doctors.”

I read your recent exchange with DEA’s Tandy with great interest. I am the victim of the duplicitous actions of the DEA. I was in a pain management practice in Fort Smith, AR. I had a congenial relationship with the local DEA agent even though I knew that he regularly kept me under surveillance by getting records from local pharmacies.

He had even referred patients to me, including a local police chief’s wife. He told a local pharmacist that I ran “the cleanest program in the state.”

He then reported to the AR State Medical Board that I was prescribing large doses of methadone for a patient (the patient in question weighed over 400 pounds). A corrupt Medical Board then suspended me for their own purposes.

This DEA agent then lied to me. He told me he had an order from the Medical Board to pick up my DEA registration. Only later did I find out that the Medical Board can’t issue such an order, and that my registration had been listed as “voluntary surrender.”

I was eventually cleared of all prescribing charges and the Medical Board allowed me to reapply for a DEA registration. Even though I was cleared, the DEA has refused to grant a registration unless I will agree to give up all due process rights and send them a record of every patient that receives a controlled substance-violating the patients privacy rights.

This has been going on for almost 3 years. I have done nothing wrong yet I can not practice medicine. I filed a complaint against the agent that lied — I have 3 witnesses to his phone call about an “order from the Medical Board” (I had him on speaker phone). They refuse to act on the complaint. They also lied to Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s office when she inquired about my case.

Ten physicians of the AR Medical Board were forced to admit that I had done nothing wrong in prescribing opioids.

My story confirms your position in your debate with Tandy.

I’ve received a couple more like this one who asked that I not publish.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 at 10:15 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.