Pubdate: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL) Copyright: 2006 Orlando Sentinel Contact: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325 Author: Karen P. Tandy, Special to the Sentinel, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel. Note: Rarely prints out-of-state LTEs. DOCTOR OR DEALER? To find new patients, Dr. Freddie Williams, a general practitioner in Panama City in the Florida Panhandle, would send two recruiters, one of whom was a heroin addict, searching for people looking for easy prescription drugs -- and frequently found them in bars. The recruiters were paid in OxyContin prescriptions, and the new "patients" received practically limitless amounts of high potency OxyContin. The OxyContin was not for pain, nor any other medicinal purpose, but simply for abuse. Patients were injecting and snorting it for the heroin-like high it gave. Williams created addicts. Patients were overdosing. Parents called his practice pleading for him not to give their children any more drugs. He did anyway. Williams was even demanding sex in exchange for prescriptions. He was diverting so many OxyContin pills to abusers and traffickers that after Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and our partners arrested him, the street price of OxyContin nearly doubled in the area because of the significantly diminished availability of OxyContin. Similarly, pharmacy burglaries and patients seeking treatment increased. A jury convicted Williams on 94 counts of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and health-care fraud, among other violations, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Fortunately, these kinds of criminal doctors are few and far between. In any given year, including 2005, fewer than one in every 10,000 physicians in the United States -- less than 0.01 percent-loses their authority to prescribe controlled substances based on a DEA investigation. These few doctors cause grave harm and contribute to the alarming prescription-drug-abuse problem in our country. Prescription controlled substances are the second most abused type of drugs -- behind only marijuana. Nearly one out of every 10 high-school seniors abuses dangerous painkillers. The addictions these drugs cause are rapidly swelling the number of Americans seeking treatment -- 63,000 at last count. The consequences can turn deadly as illustrated by the deaths of Jason Surks of New Jersey and Ryan Haight of California, who died at ages 19 and 18 after overdosing on prescription narcotics they obtained through the Internet. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that Jason and Ryan are part of a disturbing trend: Prescription painkillers now cause more drug-overdose deaths than cocaine and heroin, combined. It is DEA's job to enforce the laws of this nation to ensure pharmaceutical narcotics and other controlled drugs are used only for the health and welfare of the public. Prescription drugs help millions of Americans every day, but when these drugs harm citizens' health, feed addictions, ruin innocent lives and put more dangerous substances in our neighborhoods, the DEA must target that diversion and those responsible. In September, the DEA announced three steps to ensure that people who medically need drugs get them, and that those who are diverting them, don't. We issued a proposed rule that will make it easier for patients with chronic pain or other chronic conditions to avoid multiple trips to a physician. The DEA also released a first-of-its-kind pain statement to give the medical community the information they requested on prescribing and dispensing controlled substances to treat pain. Finally, DEA launched a new page on our Web site (www.dea.gov) to provide everyone with the facts on DEA cases against the small number of doctors who violate federal drug laws. There is much debate within the medical community about how chronic pain should be treated, how aggressively and with what medications. The DEA doesn't enter into that debate except to ensure the drugs aren't being diverted for illegal purposes as we are required to do by federal law. Doctors need to practice medicine as they have been trained to do and as they are sworn to do: to help their patients. The DEA in turn will do what we are sworn to do: to protect the American public by putting dealers like Williams out of business. - --- MAP posted-by: Elaine