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Tami
11-11-2008, 08:46 AM
The War on Drugs Is a War on Doctors
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

"When we talk about the federal war on drugs, most people conjure up visions of sinister South American drug cartels or violent urban street gangs. The emerging face of the drug war, however, is not a gangster or a junkie: It’s your friendly personal physician in a white coat. Faced with their ongoing failure to curtail the illegal drug trade, federal drug agencies have found an easier target in ordinary doctors whose only crime is prescribing perfectly legal pain medication. By applying federal statutes intended for drug dealers, federal prosecutors are waging a senseless and destructive war on doctors. The real victims of the new campaign are not only doctors, but their patients as well.

Dr. Cecil Knox of Virginia is one recent victim of federal authorities, who cannot abide physicians using their own judgment when prescribing pain medication. Dr. Knox faces federal criminal charges for prescribing legal pain drugs, and tragically has been forced to spend several hundred thousand dollars defending himself. Virginia state authorities have neither charged him with a crime nor revoked his medical license, yet the federal government – which constitutionally has no authority to usurp state drug laws – perversely seeks to imprison Dr. Knox for life!

Even if Dr. Knox is acquitted of all charges, his life will never be the same. His professional reputation and clientele cannot be easily restored, and the enormous legal bills cannot be easily repaid. So whether federal prosecutors obtain a conviction of Dr. Knox or not, the message sent to other doctors is chillingly clear: prescribe the wrong drugs and we will destroy you. The end result is that doctors become afraid to prescribe pain medication, no matter how appropriate for a patient. The judgment of doctors has been replaced by the judgment of federal drug warriors.

Those who support the war on drugs may well change their views if one day they find themselves experiencing serious pain because of an accident or old age. By creating an atmosphere that regards all powerful pain medication as suspect, the drug warriors have forced countless Americans to live degraded, bedridden lives. Even elderly deathbed patients sometimes are denied adequate pain relief from reluctant doctors and nurses. It’s one thing to support a faraway drug campaign in Colombia or Afghanistan, but it’s quite another to watch a loved one suffering acute pain that could be treated. A sane, compassionate society views advances in medical science – particularly advances that relieve great suffering – as heroic. Instead, our barbaric drug war treats pain patients the same way it treats street junkies.

Doctors are not slaves, and they will not continue practicing medicine forever if the federal government insists on monitoring, harassing, fining, and even jailing them. Congress should take action to rein in overzealous prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and stop the harassment of legitimate physicians who act in good faith when prescribing pain relief drugs. Doctors should not be prosecuted for using their best medical judgment, nor should they be prosecuted for the misdeeds of their patients."

May 18, 2004

http://lewrockwell.com/paul/paul179.html

acptulsa
11-11-2008, 08:53 AM
My mother was just in the hospital. Her doctor had to take her out of it and put her in a nursing home to finish convalescing, because the hospital was so constantly covering its ass that she could not sleep for more than an hour and was in worse shape than she was when she arrived. Doctors and nurses are no longer in charge of hospitals--they are now run by bean counters and lawyers.

How can people seriously consider socialized medicine? Are they thinking that giving everything to the government will improve things because then government will be off of their backs? What's wrong with this line of reasoning?

The drug war destroys far more lives than it saves. Regulation causes far more problems than it solves. I assure you that I will have to be in mighty bad shape to get in an ambulance--if I can fight off the EMTs I will. What a state of affairs!

Tami
11-11-2008, 08:54 AM
My name is Tami Strand, I am a board member and political activist for PRN, I would like to introduce you to our work as it is very close to Dr. Paul's heart as well and he has written exhaustively on this subject. What we are experiencing in this country with the war on doctors, chronic pain patients and the demonization of the meds that help is our nation's number 1 Public Health crisis. A short introduction to PRN. Please feel free to ask questions about our work and the struggles we face. Thank for your interest, Tami

"Welcome to PRN
Pain Relief Network was founded in 2002 in response to the Bush Administration's crackdown on pain treating physicians. The Department of Justice launched its "Oxycontin Action Plan" in response to a DEA press campaign that asserted that Purdue Pharmaceuticals had unleashed an "epidemic" of drug abuse across the country, particularly in rural Appalachia (See The DEA’s OxyContin Action Plan: An Unproven Drug Epidemic).

Much like previous drug panics (See Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America), the Federal Government sought to frighten the public. Because this drug panic coincided with the launching of the Bush Administration's war in the Middle East, the campaign was highly successful.

Doctors who treated chronic or intractable pain with opioid pain medications were literally rounded up and put on trial, the government demanding that they serve decades, sometimes hundreds of years in prison. Medical professionals not yet targeted, responded by fleeing the discipline of pain management in droves. Clinics across America have become tertiary medical facilities of the federal apparatus, essentially operating at the whim of DEA. Behind the scenes, and sometimes out front,

PRN represents the solitary organized response to this onslaught."

http://www.painreliefnetwork.org/prn/category/mainpage

Uriel999
11-11-2008, 05:00 PM
Welcome to the forum. :D What, wha, where the hell did bunchies go! Noooooooo!!!!!!!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/Zeldafreak9000/300bunchies.png

Rise bunchies rise!

youngbuck
11-11-2008, 06:14 PM
This really pisses me off. They just know no bounds, do they? Every single facet of life they infiltrate! :mad::mad::mad:

Tami
11-11-2008, 07:48 PM
Hi youngbuck,
you are exactly right, there is no line they have not crossed. Thanks for the welcome Uriel, nice chatting with you and Rev and Casey today.

Uriel, bunchies?

Remember new friends, everyone is but one car crash or catastrophic diagnosis away from being a despised citizen. If you NEED opiates for pain relief, they would rather you die in agony, than get you addicted.

No-one talks about the fact that 20,000 Americans die a year from organ failure and GI bleeding because all our docs will give us are NSAIDS. Ever hear that on the news? Oh, you may have heard about a few Oxycontin deaths though.

Death by Tylenol.

liberteebell
11-11-2008, 07:57 PM
Thank you for a wonderful post and for the PRN work you do! My sister is a nurse and I hear horror stories from her all the time.

It's time we wake up and take our bodies back. Who owns us? Ourselves or the fed.gov?

bojo68
11-11-2008, 09:53 PM
Hi youngbuck,
you are exactly right, there is no line they have not crossed. Thanks for the welcome Uriel, nice chatting with you and Rev and Casey today.

Uriel, bunchies?

Remember new friends, everyone is but one car crash or catastrophic diagnosis away from being a despised citizen. If you NEED opiates for pain relief, they would rather you die in agony, than get you addicted.

No-one talks about the fact that 20,000 Americans die a year from organ failure and GI bleeding because all our docs will give us are NSAIDS. Ever hear that on the news? Oh, you may have heard about a few Oxycontin deaths though.

Death by Tylenol.

Well ya taught me something!:) I guess I was suffering under the illusion that the govt. only picked on us poor slobs.

DamianTV
11-12-2008, 03:29 AM
Most Doctors, to me have become Chop Shop Snake Oil Salesmen.

Allow me to make my point. Antidepressant drugs are one of the most over prescribed meds on the planet. And these Dr.s are given free flights to go to these seminars, and get kickbacks (somehow) from the drug companies for prescribing them to as many people as possible. What happened to psychology and psychiatry? Theyve never had a very good rap as far as Im concerned, but it doesnt take a 12 year degree and a published Thesus to tell that you are depressed because your spouce is a piece of shit, dump em and move on! Yeah I know thats not always whats possible especially when kids are involved, but I dont like the idea of trying to sell someone on the idea that they are sick so they can sell you chemicals to unbalance your brain because you said you were bummed out because you got in a fight with your spouce when you found out they were cheating on you.

Then we get the Chiropractors (back crackers). Anyone else remember when they were all up in arms over trying to call chiro's "quacks"? Then come to find out they were wrong? Oh you got a back pain? Its all in your head. Oh its not? Ok heres an opiate derivitive for you, yeah you need to take that for the rest of your life. That didnt work at all either? Quick, lets operate and cause a LOT of damage! Hey look at that, all they needed was to get their backs cracked. Well be sure not to tell them that. So, how about lets spend the rest of the day at the golf course?

Now this isnt to say that there are not good doctors out there. I think the information they are being spoon fed is contaminated. Chinese are quacks. Homeopathics are quacks. Chiropractors are quacks. Oh you got a rash on your dick? SURGERY! Dont worry, there are lots of men who have to have their dicks chopped off because they got a rash that would have gone away in two days with the right antibiotic. The information is polluted, so the practice can be no less than polluted.

Quick! Lets socialize it so every one can afford fast food quality chop shop heres a magic pill form of medicine. So, since everyone else is going bankrupt, what happens to you when you go to the ER with socialized health care when the budget runs out?

Dary
11-12-2008, 07:37 AM
If anyone here has ever suffered from a cluster headache, you have my deepest sympathies. I am all too familiar with them.

Several years ago, I was suffering from a particularly harsh bout of them and I had to seek out medical help (again). The doctor that I went to prescribed some pain killers that I had not ever tried before and they actually worked, unlike most of the other prescriptions I had tried up until that point. I had even tried the dreaded Stadol, but I told my doctor then that if he intended to prescribe Stadol, he should just forget about it because that shit is nasty and I wouldn't take the prescription.

If I remember correctly, I believe what he prescribed was Lortab, and like I said, it did help me. What I found with the Lortab was that it actually took the pain away without leaving me in a zombie state like the Stadol did. It was kinda like I didn't even take anything. I just didn't have the pain. It never got me "high" or anything. It was just like I never had the headache to begin with. The only way to describe it was like I felt normal. For me, this was literally a life saver. Literally.

The meds that I had tried previously never really helped. The Codine and the Tylenol never took the pain away. I still had the headaches but it was like, I just didn't care. The Caffergot was terrible. Not only did it not take the pain away, I couldn't sleep, I was shaky, upset and just a mess. There were a whole slew of other meds too that I had also tried but found them to have no effect at all.

Unfortunately, when my Lortab prescription ran out, my doctor wouldn't provide a refill, and I suffered terribly. I remember calling the doctors office and requesting a refill and having the receptionist tell me that the doctor was refusing to fill it. I was just so mad that I almost wished that he would have the chance to experience (or maybe one of his children would experience) the agony of a cluster headache just so he would know what it's like. Maybe then he wouldn't be so reluctant to make a prescription. I know that's a terrible thing to wish on anyone and I really didn't mean it, but for those who have ever suffered a cluster headache, I'm sure you can relate to how it feels to actually have something available to you that can end your suffering, but not being able to take advantage of it.

This was another one of those experiences that contributed to my political awakening and I now realize that it wasn't entirely his fault (though I still think he is partially responsible).

It's just cruel to force someone to suffer. Our government is cruel. There is no other way to put it.