While the DEA clamors for control of the pharmaceutical industry the collateral damage heaped upon patients with chronic pain, and especially their Doctors, is driving the ability of physicians to properly treat their patients into the ground. The DEA has interfered with medical methodology, though they are not medical professionals and they have illegally violated the sanctity and anonymity of the Doctor/patient relationship and legal protections. All under the guise of an “epidemic” that has never existed and with no intention but to gain control of the lucrative industry.
It’s time some of these worthless politicians that we elect to the national legislature did something to pry these parasites from the backs of suffering Americans and their compassionate primary care physicians.
Dr. Daniel Maynard was the first red flag in Dallas. Called by some a “kindhearted doctor,” he handed out cash to hungry people and pills to chronic pain sufferers. The Associated Press wrote in a June 2003 story that the 57-year-old doctor was “an institution in a part of town where haggard men ask strangers for bus fare and sirens wail incessantly.” It was a neighborhood of South Dallas known for its pain, and Maynard treated it. The neighborhood also has a drug abuse problem.
A doctor of osteopathy and general practitioner since the early ’70s, Maynard ran his clinic for more than two decades. Patients, sometimes hundreds at a time, lined up daily to see him. He wrote more than 54,000 prescriptions in 2002 and wrote more scripts for Valium than any other doctor in Texas. Rebecca Martinez, whose parents were patients, told the AP that Maynard was “the one who keeps my mom and dad alive.”
Dr. Maynard was acquitted of the charges filed against him, but since then the Dept. of Justice (pronounced: Just us) has refined it’s efforts and come up with a formula to reach their diabolical ends. It’s a simple formula…Break the law and violate rights whenever possible.
The Trump administration is stepping up enforcement with the help of the Department of Justice’s new opioid fraud and abuse detection unit. Twelve assistant U.S. attorneys from around the country and a team of analysts will mine data to identify physicians who write too many opioid prescriptions. They’ll analyze the average age of patients who receive opioid prescriptions and how many die within 60 days of getting them. They plan to look at pharmacies that dispense disproportionately large amounts of opioids and regional hot spots for opioid abuse.
The unit arrives as most states have been exerting more control over health care and pharmaceutical industries, and counties around Texas and in other states have filed civil lawsuits against Big Pharma. The suits aim to hold drugmakers accountable for allegedly deceptive practices that encouraged doctors to prescribe narcotics for chronic pain patients and contributed to an epidemic of opioid overdoses.
“If you are a doctor illegally prescribing opioids for profit or a pharmacist letting these pills walk out the door and onto our streets under false pretenses, we are coming after you,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
“Our country is in the midst of a drug abuse crisis, enabled and worsened by rampant drug trafficking and prescription drug diversion,” he said. “This surge of resources … will help us make more arrests, secure more convictions and reduce the number of diverted or unnecessary prescription drugs causing addiction and overdose.”
Sessions’ surge comes as the government is already playing in murky waters when it comes to prosecuting pain doctors. Instead of following clear-cut cases like trading prescriptions for blow jobs or money, officials now look at deviations from standard care. Outspoken pain doctors such as Lynn Webster, a leading researcher in pain management in Salt Lake City, say such deviations are sometimes necessary when dealing with chronic pain.
Interesting. Sessions is such a mindless pig that he freely admits to violations of Doctor/Patient Confidentiality. Confidentiality is a fundamental tenet of medical ethics and it is the law. But don’t let a little thing like ethics get in the way. Neither Donald Trump nor Jeff Sessions have ever known the meaning of the word. It’s sad that in a country that’s supposed to be “free” a citizen has to resort to buying drugs, such as Heroin, on the street in order to maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy. Simply, people are becoming increasingly afraid of seeing Doctors for treatment of chronic pain, and Doctors likewise of treating patients with the medications they know will work, due to this ever-looming menace to freedom that is the DOJ/DEA.
Something most be done. However there are two major hurdles to the remedy. 1) A government that’s too corrupt to stand down and self-assess. And 2) A populace that’s too blind to see through the mist and hold government accountable for it’s culpability.
“They (Doctors) got to take care of their families and can’t afford to be investigated,” he says. Dr. Daniel B. Carr, the president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, called it a “civil war in the pain community” on how to treat chronic pain. Dr. Sean Mackey of Stanford University’s pain management program told PBS News Hour in January 2017, “There’s almost a McCarthyism on this that’s silencing so many people who are simply scared.”
Law enforcement’s raid on another pain doctor took place on a Tuesday morning in early March at his home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and his office in Martinsville, Virginia. This time, it involved Joel Smithers, a native Texan from the small town of Atlanta.
Smithers says his wife and four children were put in the front room as law enforcement officers went through all their vehicles, froze his bank accounts and seized $70,000 from his business and personal accounts.
“They have the most perfect system to rape you and steal from you and all your ability to fight in court,” he says. “Whether you’re talking about capital murder, drug dealer or terrorism, there is a set formula for how they go about it. They take all your assets and totally deprive you as much as possible.”
Smithers was arrested and charged with possessing with intent to distribute schedule II controlled substances. He’d been practicing since 2015 and taking patient referrals from other doctors. He says because it’s hard for patients to find a good pain management doctor to treat them, he received patients from as far away as Ohio. Smithers says federal prosecutors offered him a plea deal with a 15-year prison term but that he refuses to sign a document that isn’t true although they plan to add 717 more charges.
“It’s theatrics to put in the jury’s head that I am guilty until proven innocent,” he says. “It is purely circumstantial and based on their interpretation on facts. None of these people are doctors and have not gone to medical school.”
There is no “epidemic”. Remember that.
Thanks to Christian McPhate for a great article.
Dr. Linda Cheek – Doctors of Courage
In July, 2017, Dick Durbin (D-IL) led a group of 16 senators in sending a letter to the DEA urging the lowering of opioid production quotas for 2018. The senators who signed the letter are: Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Angus King (I-ME), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Al Franken (D-MN).
Brown, Klobuchar, Manchin, King, Feinstein, McCaskill, Baldwin, and Gillibrand are up for reelection this November. These Senators need to be voted out of office.
captainkona
