FWD: USA Today-Prescriptions for Painkillers are Harder to Get

RSD In the News : FWD: USA Today-Prescriptions for Painkillers are Harder to Get
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From: byrd45 (Original Message) Sent: 5/27/2005 8:58 AM
Prescriptions for painkillers are harder to get
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
As an undercover narcotics agent, Richard Schleigh saw illicit drugs ruin lives. Now, as a chronic pain patient injured during a drug raid, he says it can be easier to buy drugs on the street than get a prescription from a doctor.

Richard Schleigh uses fentanyl skin patches to battle his shoulder pain.
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY

Schleigh, 37, of Hagerstown, Md., isn't about to go that route. Not after a dedicated law enforcement career with the Washington County Sheriff's Department that ended prematurely while he was serving on a Drug Enforcement Administration investigative task force.

But he hears fellow patients complain that doctors won't prescribe controlled substances because they fear the DEA. Some say they have trouble getting prescriptions filled. Schleigh is fighting to get workman's compensation to pay for the narcotic fentanyl skin patches that are the only drug so far to offer relief.

The American Pain Foundation says 1 in 4 pain patients can't get treatment.

"Doctors are so nervous about these patients they're reluctant to treat them," says Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., a former FBI agent whose brother has a morphine pump for intense back pain. Rogers has introduced a bill into Congress to create six regional pain treatment centers to improve patient and doctor education, treatment and research.

Doctors are still reeling from the conviction of Virginia pain specialist William Hurwitz, who was sentenced in April to 25 years in prison for overprescribing controlled drugs.

"At what point did Hurwitz leave the practice of medicine and cross the line into criminal behavior?" asks Scott Fishman of the University of California-Davis. "That line isn't clear. Until it is clear, it's very hard to convince a doctor who wants to do the right thing to approach that line."

For her part, DEA administrator Karen Tandy says, "last year we arrested 42 doctors. That's less than 1% of the hundreds of thousands of doctors who are registered to prescribe controlled substances."

Mary Vargas, 32, of Emmitsburg, Md., a lawyer for the disabled, says even she has a tough time persuading druggists to fill prescriptions. "If a discrimination lawyer who has been a patient for 10 years can't get a prescription filled, there are a lot of other people who can't either."

Schleigh dislocated his right shoulder when he slipped during a drug bust. Soon the pain grew so overwhelming that he landed in the hospital. Over the next year, the pain spread across his back to his arms.

At first he was wary of narcotics. His doctor reassured him that the drugs induce euphoria and addiction only when they flood the brain through a vein or the nasal passages.

"It took me a long time to even consider opiates for pain relief because I saw the dark side of it," Schleigh says. "When I talked to the doctor about it, he said, 'You're not going to become an addict. You don't have to worry about the things you saw on the street.' "