Re: drug use by our homeless family members or friends?, lets adopt them

Andy Katz wrote:
> Brother Nate wrote:
> > Government delineates what substances are legal to use as
> > medicines.  Doctors prescribe them.  This really isn't
> > that hard to figure out, nor is it inherently unreasonable.

> Nate, I've been curious as to your reaction to recent accounts of the
> DEA raiding the offices of physicians who specialize in the treatment
> of chronic pain. One such, Cecil Knox, was just acquitted of most
> charges, the jury hung on some others. Whatever happens to Dr Knox in
> court, his practice has got to be deader than the Dodo bird. 

My reaction is that they're sadly over-zealous, and they
do little but provide folks like you with red herrings.

The bottom line in all of this isn't supposed to be what
happens between doctors and patients but rather what happens
between black marketers and the drug abusers they exploit -
people like the ones discussed in the article link that
Adam posted.

> There are others, Hurwitz, Westmoreland, Woodward
>
> http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17428  or
>
> http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/197/docsinthedock.shtml
>
> Some of these MDs are undoubtedly pill-pushers, but others are clearly
> not. You know how easy it is to obtain a conviction in federal court
> these days. Any doc who wins an acquittal certainly deserves it.
>
> But that's not the problem. The problem is that rather than
> investigate by knocking on the door and examining records, the DEA
> serves warrants on these practices by bursting in, pointing weapons at
> patients, forcing them against the floor, handcuffing them ... in
> short scaring the shit out of them. 

It's a gross mis-use of taxpayer money, if nothing else.
I cordially concede that this is a matter for the auditors
from state medical examiners boards.  Yet that doesn't mean
that the DEA is obsolete - there's still the question of
the black market and cigar boxes exchanged in Denny's
parking lots.

Some channels of pain pill distribution are clearly criminal,
and that's where I'd prefer to see the DEA devoting their
time.

[...]
> You know, Nate, studies pretty consistently show that people when it
> comes to the possibility of catastrophic illness people don't fear
> death so much as they do pain and disfigurement.

That isn't terribly surprising - even when you have good
sympathetic doctors like I do chronic pain is a grim prospect.
Given my druthers I'd honestly prefer to have something
terminal.  I freely admit I've had my sins, but I'm not
afraid of what I'll have to say for myself when I meet
the Almighty.

> What the DEA is doing
> right now affects the whole fabric of our national life. Pain control
> was already a delicate issue, but  the DEA is exacerbating it.

Granted.  That's why I say that questions like this one are
practically hand-picked to serve as distractions away from
the real issue which is people who aren't in any pain aside
from boredom who want to alleviate that "suffering" by
treating drugs as toys.

> You've accused me of wanting to dismantle the Controlled Substances
> Act, when I've advocated no such thing.

If you have ever endorsed the argument that US drug law is
unConstitutional then you can't evade the fact that if you
overturn the CSA on the question of MJ then everything else
comes falling down too.  If I've convinced you that there
are other more productive avenues for discussion then I
hope you don't mind if I consider that a modest victory.

> I don't believe morphine, or
> ritalin or  valium should be sold over the counter. But the way the
> DEA is enforcing the CSA right now is a cure far far worse than the
> disease it was designed to fight.

Granted.

--
Brother Nate               Electron Juggler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]     http://mypage.iu.edu/~nengle
"Some Assembly Required"