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.