I’ve exchanged a couple of emails with Mark Kleiman, and he feels I’ve mischaracterized him. He says he doesn’t support the DEA’s anti-opioid campaign. Rather, he was just exposing what he calls Tierney’s shoddy journalism. Fair enough on the former.

I disagree on the latter, of course. I point out in the post below why I think Kleiman’s charge that Tierney calls DEA agents “cowards” is misplaced. They aren’t cowards. If anything, they’re too militaristic. When they arrest one of these doctor’s offices, the invevitably do it with a SWAT arsenal.

They’re trying to appease their critics in Congress and at the GAO, who told them five years ago that they’re failing to stem the illegal drug supply. Going after doctors — who keep records, pay taxes, and operate in the open — is much easier than going after foreign cartels and black market dealers. That’s what Tierney wrote in his column. Kleiman I guess took once sentence — “They aren’t armed” — and concluded that Tierney must think DEA agents are cowards. I think that’s more than a stretch. It’s a reasonable assumption that a doctor isn’t going to fire back when a DEA team storms his office. It’s a reasonable assumption that a dealer might. And so it’s a reasonable assumption that any given DEA agent would prefer to raid a doctor’s office to a black market dealer’s home. You can make those assumptions without believing DEA agents to be cowards.

I disagree with most of what Kleiman wrote about the illicit oxycodone supply — in the extent of it, the extent of its harm, how much of it comes from doctors, and what should be done about it. But that I guess is mere difference of opinion. So I’ll retract the snarky line about him making “too many errors to mention.”

Still, if it’s merely a difference of opinion, it isn’t “shoddy journalism” on Tierney’s part, either. Tierney makes several cogents points (many of them taken from the Cato paper I edited) about the real nature of the illicit oxycodone supply. Kleiman doesn’t address or refute any of them. Instead, he casually brushes them aside as “Purdue Pharma mumbo jumbo,” as if that settles the debate. If Tierney’s guilty of “shoddy journalism,” Kleiman’s guilty of shoddy punditry.

Purdue had nothing to do with that data. It was uncovered medical examiners’ data and crunched by Cato paper’s author, Ron Libby, who has no connection to Purdue whatsoever.

I also still think Kleiman should retract his attack on Tierney’s motivation for writing the series, because I know for a fact he’s wrong. The Rush Limbaugh put-him-up-to-it stuff is knee-jerk politics. And in writing it he gives fodder to all the other left-wing reactionaries making the same accusations elsewhere.

I know it’s hard to believe, but it is possible for someone with free market leanings to feel compassion, and to sense and be geniuinely outraged at injustice — all while harboring no ulterior motive whatsoever.

Happens to me all the time.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 8:21 pm 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.