Re: PRN Constitutional Claim on Behalf of Americans In Pain
- From: Flame <catzilla04@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 15:03:03 -0700 (PDT)
On May 28, 8:13 am, Tami <tmst...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Constitutional Claim on Behalf of Americans In Pain
Nov 13, 2005
Press Release
Painreliefnetwork.org
Constitutional Claim on Behalf of Americans In Pain
Presented By Siobhan Reynolds
President, Pain Relief Network
“Men feared witches and burnt women.”
Justice Louis D. Brandeis 1927
"The Problem
People in severe pain are unable to mobilize to defend their rights.
Chronic pain is a disease and when left untreated sufferers often find
it beyond their power to place telephone calls or use computers. These
people cannot work, attend to their families, enjoy social or sexual
relationships, or participate in holiday celebrations. When pain is
overwhelming, they cannot think clearly or even sleep. 50 to 70
million Americans live in chronic disabling pain. According to a 1999
survey, one third described their pain as “almost the worst pain one
can possibly imagine.1”
Over the past twenty years the medical community, in concert with
policy makers, worked in good faith within the current legal paradigm
attempting to get pain treated. Safe harbor laws were enacted, medical
board guidelines drafted, and for a short while, a few doctors began
to treat chronic pain with opioids.
In 2001, the United States Department of Justice unleashed a torrent
of criminal prosecutions against physicians and called this crackdown
the “Oxycontin Action Plan.” All over the United States conscientious
physicians have been prosecuted, jailed, or have lost their licenses
to practice medicine. Dr. William Hurwitz, a pioneering pain
physician, was tried and convicted of violating the Controlled
Substances Act. He is presently serving a 25-year term in federal
prison. Dr. Ronald McIver is serving 30 years, and Dr. Freddie
Williams is serving a life sentence. There are countless other
examples.
Medical Abandonment Feeds the Prosecutorial Machine
Frightened by this brutal display of executive power, most doctors,
including those in the field of pain management, have simply abandoned
this sickest and most vulnerable segment of our population. Patients
suffering from mild to moderate pain, and requiring low dosages of
opioids may still find care, but those patients with high dosage
requirements are increasingly shut out of care altogether.
Due to this public health disaster and humanitarian catastrophe,
untold numbers of our trusting citizens have been unable to recover
from injuries or illnesses that would, with proper treatment, be
entirely manageable. Unable to find relief, these pain victims are
often driven to suicide. Countless other patients have been provoked
by their doctor’s meager dosages to visit more than one physician
looking for enough medication to allow them a measure of normal
functioning, only to find themselves arrested for “doctor shopping.”
These unintentional criminals are often coerced into confessing to
drug crimes and/or providing false testimony against alleged co-
conspirators. To avoid long prison sentences, they may be forced to
submit to ineffectual and inappropriate treatment for addiction, and
face the prospect of unrelieved pain for the rest of their lives.
Civil Rights of Americans in Pain Destroyed
In 2004 it was estimated that there were less than 5000 pain
specialists in the United States,2 many of whom would not, as a matter
of policy, prescribe opioids. Those few medical practices which do
treat chronic pain with opioids impose severe restrictions on
patients’ freedoms.
Patients are routinely required to sign unilateral “pain contracts,”
promising to see only the designated physician for care, relinquishing
their rights to visit emergency rooms, and to use more than one
pharmacy. Often the patient must agree to waive his right to medical
privacy, and permit government agents unlimited review of his medical
records in order to be eligible for
opioid therapy. One such “contract” required that the patient not
“anger any county employee.”
Violation of these contractual provisions may result in draconian
sanctions imposed by the physician, including the cessation of pain
treatment. Patients are forced to sell businesses, give up jobs, and
to relinquish custody of their children. As a consequence of being
labeled “non-compliant,” the abandoned patient will find it nearly
impossible to procure replacement care.
Spectral Evidence
The root of the problem is the Controlled Substances Act, which
defines addiction in a manner that renders willful substance abusers
indistinguishable from undertreated pain patients.
The term “addict” means any individual who habitually uses any
narcotic drug so as to endanger the public morals, health, safety, or
welfare, or who is so far addicted to the use of narcotic drugs as to
have lost the power of self-control with reference to his addiction.
21 USCS Section 802 (1996)
The law’s apparent aim is to keep substance abusers from being
maintained on opioids by physicians who are not in possession of a
special maintenance license. Under this scheme, should the pain
treating physician fail to divine the true character of a patient’s
opioid dependency and inadvertently provide maintenance to a substance
abuser, this failure may subject the physician to Federal accusation
of drug dealing and all that it implies, including forfeiture
proceedings, personal ruin, and decades in prison. At trial, patients
in pain are obliged to confess addiction and to testify that their
doctor “addicted them” in order to provide substantial assistance to
the prosecution and thereby escape a lengthy prison term. No
corroborating medical testimony is required to establish a patient’s
self-diagnosis of addiction in a Federal courtroom.
Witchmarks
In response to the enforcement of the CSA, physicians who treat pain
have invented a system to ferret out “legitimate patients” from
addicts. Common behaviors such as losing a prescription, or asking for
more medication are considered “aberrant” and have become self-evident
indications of addiction. A patient’s display of any of these
behaviors is sanctionable by withdrawal of medical care. This system
provides the pain-treating physician a way out of continuing treatment
that he perceives to threaten his professional and personal existence.
The ability of patients to remain in care is threatened at every turn.
Patients in pain are required to attempt to prove to their physicians
that they are not addicts or criminals. Patients who have
any encounter with law enforcement, or who are turned in to their
doctors by spouses or coworkers for taking what these lay associates
believe to be too much medicine, find themselves severed from their
medications as the doctor attempts to protect himself from potentially
damaging future testimony.
The results are discriminatory and racist. Minorities, people with
psychiatric disorders, poor people, and Americans who have a history
of substance abuse are virtually unable to find care.
Simply put, the Controlled Substances Act is, by every meaningful
definition, arbitrary power enforcing its edicts to the injury of
persons and property; the very sort of thing the 5th Amendment was
enacted to prevent.
The Structure of The CSA is Unconstitutional
The Controlled Substances Act prohibits opioid possession and
distribution, and allows for harsh criminal sanctions. Possession and
distribution of controlled substances is permissible only when the
Attorney General of the United States authorizes such activity.
This criminalizes the pain patient and the physician, requiring both
to prove their conduct is authorized. The very structure of the law,
therefore, denies people in pain the traditional presumption of
innocence that free people enjoy and lifts the burden of proof off of
the government and puts it squarely on citizens in pain and those who
would treat them.
The Solution
Because the Controlled Substances Act unjustly prejudices the due
process rights of patients suffering from chronic pain, the Pain
Relief Network seeks to enjoin the DEA from enforcing the
Controlled Substances Act against physicians. We anticipate having the
CSA declared unconstitutional by arguing that patients in pain have an
important liberty interest in not having their “state of
being” (opioid dependency) de facto criminalized. The argument is not
that people in pain have any fundamental right to pain treatment or
health care. Rather, it is that the majority may not criminalize the
activities of an unpopular minority simply because they find a
behavior morally offensive.3 A bare desire to harm a politically
unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest.4
Once the lack of available pain treatment in the United States is
perceived as a consequence, however unintended, of the Controlled
Substances Act, it will become clear that we cannot continue to
further harm sick people and their relationships with their physicians
in this manner."
http://www.painreliefnetwork.org/prn/co…; n-pain.php
http://www.painreliefnetwork.org/prn/category/mainpage/
Tami PRN
VERY GRIM - as you of ALL people know Tami. I hope this shakes them
up, because I don't want to see
just how much further this pendulum can swing toward persecution of
docs and patients.
(((Thanks for all that you do Tami))))
codeeeM
.
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