FROM PAINKILLERS TO PRISON

When the issue of chronic pain intersects with this nation's draconian drug
laws, common sense and compassion often take a holiday. Consider the case
of Richard Paey, a 45-year-old father of three who sits in a wheelchair,
debilitated by multiple sclerosis and chronic pain from botched back
surgery, and is now facing a 25-year mandatory minimum sentence for having
forged prescriptions to treat his pain.

Paey's case is just one example of the skewed priorities that result from
the nation's drug war: Mandatory minimums tie the hands of judges to offer
leniency; and the looming threat of prosecution dissuades doctors from
aggressively treating pain.

Paey and his wife moved to Florida from New Jersey in 1994. Earlier, a car
accident and disastrous back surgery had left him in debilitating pain,
putting him on disability. Paey claimed he couldn't find a local doctor to
treat him and so his New Jersey physician sent him undated but signed
prescriptions for Percocet, Lortab and Valium.

In January 1997, investigators from the Drug Enforcement Administration met
with Paey's New Jersey doctor about the illegal prescriptions. When that
source dried up, the government says Paey filled old prescriptions he had
photocopied. Despite months-long surveillance of Paey's activities, there
was never any evidence that he resold the 1,200 painkillers he bought
between January and March. It was all apparently for his personal use.

Still, in 1997 he was charged with drug trafficking, among other drug-
related crimes.

To the credit of Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe, Paey was
offered a generous plea deal of house-arrest and probation, but he
stubbornly refused it. Later plea offers for a five-year prison sentence
were also rejected. Paey didn't feel that medicating his pain should have
been a crime.

And he has a point. While altering a prescription is certainly a criminal
act, the under-treatment of pain has been a long-running health care
problem in this country, now exacerbated by the increased recreational use
of prescription medications such as OxyContin. As the DEA and other law
enforcement agencies have stepped up their scrutiny of doctors, many have
been frightened away from offering their patients aggressive pain treatment.

The result has been making drug traffickers out of patients who doctor shop
and engage in other unlawful practices to get sufficient quantities of
painkillers. This is an abuse of our criminal justice resources. Paey is
not a man who belongs in prison. What he and other pain patients need is a
health care system that will respond to their affliction. (Paey now has a
morphine pump in his back to dull the pain. His wife says, ironically, it
provides him with more narcotics than he was getting from the Percocet,
which is 98.5 percent Tylenol.)

But it looks like prison is very much on the horizon. After two trials were
set aside due to irregularities, Paey was convicted by a New Port Richey
jury last month in a third. He was found guilty of 15 counts of drug
trafficking, obtaining a controlled substance by fraud and possession of
controlled substances. He faces multiple 25-year mandatory minimum
sentences, since Florida's rigid drug laws treat everyone with a certain
amount of medicine like a drug dealer. Sentencing is April 16.

Plenty of blame can be spread around for this travesty, including to Paey
himself for not taking the initial plea offer, but the drug laws are the
main problem. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws result in breathtaking
injustices and remain in place because lawmakers refuse to act rationally
where drug issues are involved. With the law stripping Florida's judges of
discretion, Paey's only hope is another generous plea offer. Otherwise,
this man of failing health will probably spend the rest of his years behind
bars.