PROFESSION

Attorneys general step into pain prescribing debate

The group is asking the DEA not to impede "the legitimate practice of medicine," but the agency says it is not a barrier to care.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Feb. 21, 2005.

A new voice has joined the chorus claiming that recent actions by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration appear to impede the prescribing of controlled substances to treat pain.

The National Assn. of Attorneys General, in a Jan. 19 letter, called on DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy to meet with representatives of the organization to "find ways to prevent abuse and diversion without infringing on the legitimate practice of medicine or exerting a chilling effect on the willingness of physicians to treat patients who are in pain."

The letter was signed by the attorneys general from 29 states and the District of Columbia. The effort was led by Oklahoma Attorney General and NAAG Past President W.A. Drew Edmondson, who said he was approaching the issue from a consumer-protection standpoint.

"If our consumers are not receiving what they need and want as health care consumers, then that's a problem for the attorney general," Edmondson said. "The new position of the DEA has at least the potential -- if not the actual effect -- of being a barrier to doctors prescribing the proper drugs for treating pain. I fully support efforts to combat diversion, but we have to find ways to combat diversion that does not impact on good patient care."

Edmondson said it appears that investigating physicians might be the new focus of DEA anti-diversion efforts, and he disagrees with that approach. "We should concentrate on drugs that are illegally on the streets and work backward from that to find out how they got illegally on the streets," he said. "It should not be the other way around looking at doctors."

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