Pubdate: Wed, 14 Mar 2007
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2007 Independent Media Institute
Contact:  http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Maia Szalavitz
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUFFERER SERVING 25-YEAR SENTENCE FOR TAKING PAIN KILLERS

Florida's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Richard Paey, a 
wheelchair-using father of three who is currently serving a 25-year 
mandatory prison sentence for taking his own pain medication. In 
doing so, the court let stand a decision which essentially claims 
that the courts have no role in checking the powers of the executive 
and legislative branches of government when an individual outcome is 
patently unjust.

Richard Paey -- who suffers both multiple sclerosis and from the 
aftermath of a disastrous and barbaric back surgery that resulted in 
multiple major malpractice judgments -- now receives virtually twice 
as much morphine in prison than the equivalent in opioid medications 
for which he was convicted of forging prescriptions.

He had previously been given legitimate prescriptions for the same 
doses of pain medicine -- but made the mistake of moving to Florida 
from New Jersey, where he could not find a physician to treat his 
pain adequately. Each of his medical conditions alone can produce 
agony. Paey has described his pain as constantly feeling like his 
legs had been "dipped into a furnace."

The Ivy-league educated attorney has no prior criminal convictions, 
and weeks of surveillance by narcotics agents did not find him 
selling the medications.

The Florida Court of Appeals had upheld his conviction -- despite the 
lack of evidence of trafficking and despite the fact that most of 
weight of the substances he was convicted of possessing (higher 
weights lead to longer sentences) was made up of Tylenol, not 
narcotics. The majority suggested that Paey seek clemency from the 
governor, claiming that his plea for mercy "does not fall on deaf 
ears, but it falls on the wrong ears."

In a jeremiad of a dissent, Judge James Seals called the sentence 
"illogical, absurd, unjust and unconstitutional," noting that Paey 
"could conceivably go to prison for a longer stretch for peacefully 
but unlawfully purchasing 100 oxycodone pills from a pharmacist than 
had he robbed the pharmacist at knife point, stolen 50 oxycodone 
pills, which he intended to sell to children waiting outside, and 
then stabbed the pharmacist."

But the Florida Supreme Court disagreed, letting the sentence stand, 
without comment. It released its cowardly decision in the media quiet 
of a Friday night. As Siobhan Reynolds, founder of the Pain Relief 
Network points out, "Where Florida stands now is that individuals 
have no recourse to the courts when the executive and legislative 
branches behave tyranically." Under the Constitution, the role of the 
judiciary is supposed to be to check the powers of the other branches 
-- not simply to defer to them.

Paey's only other alternatives now are an appeal to the U.S. Supreme 
Court or clemency from Governor Charlie Crist.

Writing in support of clemency, leading academic pain specialist 
Russell Portenoy, MD, said, "the information available indicates that 
any questionable actions [Paey] took, actions which led ultimately to 
his arrest, were driven by desperation related to uncontrolled pain."

He noted that such cases "may increase the reluctance of 
professionals to treat pain aggressively."

Portenoy wrote that despite the fact that Paey required high doses of 
opioids, those doses were "clearly in the range used by pain 
specialists in this country." He stressed that, "The number of pills 
or milligrams of an opioid required for analgesia says nothing about 
any of the negative outcomes associated with these drugs-including 
abuse, addiction and diversion-and reference to the amount of drug as 
evidence of these outcomes by regulators or law enforcement should 
not be condoned."

Unfortunately, across the country, pain patients are being 
undermedicated and doctors are going to prison because the Justice 
Department refuses to believe this.

People profess to be experts about addiction because they have 
personal experience with drugs or addicts; they think they know about 
opioid drugs because they've watched a few episodes of E.R. or been 
through DARE classes at school. The truth is that opioids are amongst 
the safest drugs known to humanity -- when given appropriately, they 
do not kill.

Unlike aspirin, Tylenol, Vioxx, Celebrex, Advil, Alleve and every 
other known class of pain medications, opioids do not harm any organs 
and there is no maximum dose once a person has become tolerant to 
them. People need to educate themselves about the complexities of how 
drugs, brains and settings interact before making policies about them 
that send people like Richard Paey to prison.

Governor Crist, please, do the right thing and send Richard Paey home.

Maia Szalavitz is a senior fellow at the media watchdog group STATS.