Thank you for being one of the few people in the media who seem to understand how devastating this war ON PAIN PATIENTS has become for us. For those of us who rely on the use of long term opioid therapy in order to survive, and have major, diagnosed, pain conditions….it is unfathomable to us that the very government we rely on to protect us, is the one abusing and neglecting us! With media attention to groups like, PROP, who recommend taking, “Tylenol” and to use other forms of non-opioid pain relief….people are buying into this idea that other treatments will work for us. if non-opioid pain treatments worked exclusively for us, we wouldn’t be taking opioids!!!! WE ARE the people who have used these as LAST resort, because we have tried everything else….for YEARS, before we could find a doctor willing to prescribe pain medications to us. I suffer from a rare, genetic, connective tissue disorder called, Ehlers-danlos syndrome. Patients with EDS produce faulty collagen, which acts as the “glue” in our bodies…..it effects every organ system, blood vessel, GI tract, etc…. The results are devastating…. Loose, unstable, hypermobile joints that constantly dislocate and subluxate, multiple surgeries, constant injury, the list is endless! There is no cure, and without opioid medications (if we have been lucky enough to find a doctor to prescribe them) would be bedridden. We have severe, intractable chronic pain, in addition to major episodes of acute pain…sometimes DAILY. Before I found proper pain control with opioids, I was suicidal with pain. You cannot live with THAT kind of pain everyday, and have any HOPE. To think of going back to THAT horrible, pathetic, agonizing existence is devastating. The idea that I could walk into my pharmacy one day, to find out they no longer carry my medicine, or that their is a shortage….is TERRIFYING! What’s even more terrifying, is that it is INTENTIONAL…. a massive pain crisis, and withdrawal, perpetuated by MY own government. Putting my life at risk, because people who aren’t supposed to be using this medicine overdosed on it. SO,….what? Punish people who already suffer tremendously…..so that determined addicts can just “switch” their drug if choice? Let’s just say, that the kind of anxiety that this crisis is putting on legit pain patients, doesn’t exactly help our already stressed, painful bodies. I feel so terrible for what patients are going through in Florida….it is ABUSE. Well….I’m next, I guess. My insurer, BCBS of MA has decided that people like me, don’t need any relief from severe, intractable, incurable pain, for any longer than 15 days. Apparently, all my “extra” doses laying around could pose a threat to society! SO….lets get this straight! My government wants me to suffer WITHOUT pain control, and my “health” insurance company wants to tell me I should be cured from INTRACTABLE pain in two weeks? Okay, got it.

At what point does an act of law enforcement cross the line into the practice of medicine without a license? The DEA is literally diagnosing patients as not needing the medicine actual doctors have prescribed.

Are federal agents exempt from all laws?

–>Which illustrates that they are uncaring evil people who believe that
–> the mantra “I’m just doing my job” relinquishes them from any moral
–> responsibility of their actions. It matters not how many lives are
–> destroyed over immoral laws. They uphold the law and your issue is
–> with politicians who make the laws.

—-> Which negates your statements in #29.

I have to say that the above are rather valid points. Where is the morality or conscience in these officers of the law? The real root of the problem surely is backstopped by money. It seems these days that policing for profit has become quite fashionable for all of the alphabet soup “for our own good” organizations. From the drug warriors, the local cops right on down to the politicians who want some money to fund their pet project. Federal, State and Local organizations have become hooked on the profit motive inherent in this sort of enforcement activity.

Back to the moral issue on this, it is shameful that we would deny even a single person who is suffering pain in order to prevent someone from doing something for their own good. I have seen the effect of this war on pills first hand. A friend of mine, whose mother was sick with a terminal neuropathy, was in constant excruciating pain. The pain meds were the only reason her pain could be brought to tolerable levels so that she could get out of bed and do a few normal things like the rest of us. When she did not have her pain medication, she could not even stand the pain that came from her broken nerve endings sending pain signals. The conventional wisdom is that it is preferable to prevent someone from becoming an “addict” while relegating them to a state of mere bed ridden existence rather than treat their pain which allows them to regain some of the ability to live life again for the time they have left.

I have also seen in the case mentioned above, how doctors have become so risk averse to writing scripts for her to fill her pain medication, that it became necessary for her to fly to another state every couple of months to see her previous pain doctor who was courageous enough to give the DEA the finger for the sake of his patient.

This whole issue is superbly illustrative of what happens when human suffering can be converted into a for profit exercise at the behest of shameless single minded bureaucrats with no other purpose than servicing their narrow mandates for what they rationalize to be a just cause.

I’m afraid you’ve badly missed the point. If a cop talking to a civilian in a room full of other cops can ADMIT that the drug war is just as morally arbitrary as a hypothetical campaign against black market candy bars, then there is clearly a basis for understanding between us and them.

But the path to that understanding is blocked when we retreat into the cheap and lazy refrain of denouncing all cops as “uncaring evil people”.

Do you think mean teachers are the root cause of failure in public schools? Do you think the problems with our health care system can be neatly summed up by declaring that all nurses are insensitive bitches? Would you say the war in Iraq is a disaster because our enlisted men are just a bunch of dicks?

Of course not. You would never say THOSE things, because you recognize them for what they are: counter-productive, thought terminating cliches that prevent you from getting at the moral complexities of the real world.

So why say such things here? What on earth do you gain by personalizing and crudely simplifying what is so obviously a systemic and complicated problem?

They all laughed. One of them said: “What do think? At first everybody would say ‘this is bullshit’ and next thing you know some of us would be posing for a picture next to a big ass pile of confiscated Snickers After that, game on.”

Which illustrates that they are uncaring evil people who believe that the mantra “I’m just doing my job” relinquishes them from any moral responsibility of their actions. It matters not how many lives are destroyed over immoral laws. They uphold the law and your issue is with politicians who make the laws.

Which negates your statements in #29.

Unfortunately, the FDA and DEA focus too much on the harms/risks and not enough on the benefits. For example, short term Vioxx use is arguably safer than short term high dose NSAIDs (Naproxen, Ibuprofen, etc), and opiates are king for pain control. Of course, we are not allowed to take those risks ourselves.

The drug war is state sanctioned persecution. The only good thing about it is that it will eventually end just as most persecution crusades end. Unfortunately, some new crusade will take its place.

A large part of the state’s identity is persecution, not just the drug war, which helps you understand exactly how the state continues to exist. It will eventually end…in pockets here and there that move on without a state. Your last sentence sums up current status of the Arab Spring nicely.

Thanks for clearing that up. I think I’d heard/read that somewhere but, after reviewing the Schedules more carefully _after_ commenting, I had a tough time making that fit my premise.

I get smarter every time I read here. :)

Citations? OK, will try. On the “Kenny Easley got his kidney fried by the OTC painkillers the Seahawks kept by the gross in the training room and urged the players to grab a daily handful” to stop those nagging aches & pains, just google ‘Kenny Easley + Ibuprofen’. You’ll get boocoo results, from wiki to the LA Times.

On the ‘Revenooers done poisoned alcohol in the ’20′s thus killing possibly as many as 10,000 people’ (!!), try this one from ‘Slate’:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html

Enjoy.