Pain Doctors: Criminals or Saviors?

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Chair

January, 2004

One of the most important but least emphasized aspects of the drug war is the Drug Enforcement Administration’s increasing prosecution of physicians who prescribe legal opiates. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gene Rossi told a reporter, "Our office will try our best to root out [certain doctors] like the Taliban. Stay tuned." The agency insists that it only targets rogue practitioners who over-prescribe the medicines and who know—or should know—that their patients are selling the drugs on the black market.

Critics say the force used in arresting doctors is far in excess of what is necessary to arrest unarmed physicians and office staff and is clearly intended to garner publicity and to frighten and intimidate other physicians. In a typical raid last June more than 20 agents in swat gear and heavily armed burst into Dr. Daniel Maynard’s clinic in Dallas. The agents kicked down doors, ransacked the office and handcuffed the staff and patients, including an elderly woman with a stroller and an oxygen tank. Investigators noted that 11 of Dr. Maynard’s patients had died and described him as prescribing narcotics without a valid medical purpose. He has not been charged.

The effect of such raids has been stunning. Dr. Ronald Myers, president of the American Pain Institute and a Baptist minister who operates clinics for poor people in the Mississippi Delta says, "Such is the climate of fear across the medical community that for every doctor who has his license yanked by the DEA, there are a hundred doctors scared to prescribe proper pain medication for fear of going to prison.” "Physicians are being threatened, impoverished, delicensed, and imprisoned for prescribing in good faith with the intention of relieving pain," says Kathryn Serkes of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, “The ‘war on drugs’ has turned into a war on doctors.”

"Opioids when taken under clinical supervision are not that dangerous," says Dr. Myers. "The data tells us that only 3 percent of people who take opioids become addicts.…The best medicines for the treatment of chronic pain are narcotics. They have less side effects and more benefits than any other type of drug." The consequences of untreated pain are severe. Without pain relief the victims of serious disease, injury or amputation are often bedridden, unemployable, depressed and in some cases suicidal. According to Siobhan Reynolds the Pain Relief Network, "All over America, pain patients are committing suicide because of the DEA's campaign. I know of at least 17 recent cases in Arkansas alone. It's really astonishing the amount of human carnage that this campaign has already caused."

A major protest on the National Mall is being organized for next April by the National Pain Patients Coalition. The agenda is to expose the deceitful tactics employed by law enforcement to snare doctors; to expose prosecutors' manipulation of the legal system to frighten doctors and patients who might be willing to testify on behalf of the wrongfully accused doctors; to announce a national campaign to stop prescription drug abuse and to make recommendations for legal remedies to protect doctors from overzealous prosecutions.