PATIENT COMFORT `A DRUG WAR CASUALTY'

Patients often fail to receive the pain relief they need in part because
physicians don't want legal authorities to think they're abetting drug
abuse, suggests Timothy Jost, a law professor suggests.

Writing in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Timothy Jost of Ohio
State University said that patient comfort is an unfortunate casualty of
the nation's war on drugs.

"We're fighting a war on drugs in this country and some of the drugs we're
fighting against -like morphine -are the drugs that people in serious pain
really need," said Jost, who interviewed prosecutors, defense attorneys and
physicians to prepare his report.

Even though prosecutors assured Jost that they didn't wish to inhibit
physicians' legitimate use of narcotics in pain management, he found that
physicians who merely received letters asking about the volume of narcotics
they prescribed were often rattled by the inquiry.