IN PAIN? CALL A COP

Among many unintended consequences of the war on drugs -- destruction
of the inner cities, loss of respect for the law, gang warfare --
there is one surprise about to nail Baby Boomers right between the
eyes. And we're witnessing it with increasing frequency over the
past 24 months.

As this fabled generation approaches antiquity with the standard
compliment of ailments that flesh is heir to, they are discovering
the federal government is utterly indifferent to their physical pain,
even when the pain is so excruciating you'd rather be dead.

Ever had a toothache over the weekend? You try to focus on Monday
morning when the dentist will be back from his fishing trip. But what
if the toothache is incurable? "Imagine if you had to grin and bear
it for an undetermined period of time," says pain patient Richard
Paey. "You can't see straight. You think you'll pass out, and
sometimes you do. And sometimes you pray you will."

Mr. Paey was sentenced last year to 25 years in Florida state prison
for trying to get enough narcotics to make his agony bearable. No
matter that he is wheelchair bound with MS and his back was destroyed
by botched surgery twenty years ago. Florida drug cops in combination
with the Drug Enforcement Administration busted him because his
prescriptions were not in order -- his doctor was out of state.

It seems he couldn't find a local doctor because most physicians
these days are terrified of the DEA. Consider the case of Dr. Frank
Fisher, a Harvard trained physician who used to run a community
health center in Anderson, California. Dr. Fisher caught the
attention of the drug police when he began prescribing narcotics at a
rate the non-medically educated lawmen felt was inappropriate. They
arrested him and charged him with murder -- five of his patients had
died after he prescribed narcotics. He was labeled a drug kingpin
and jailed under a $15 million bond.

But when the case got to court, Shasta County Judge William Gallagher
didn't like anything about it. He dismissed the murder charges yes,
the patients had died but Fisher had nothing to do with it. One
woman was killed in a car crash -- as a passenger!

This past April Dr. Fisher was finally exonerated on all charges --
after five months in prison and six years in court. Now he's 51, flat
broke, living with his parents, and his clinic is long gone. If you
ask him for painkillers today he'll likely say, "Take two aspirin and
call me in the morning."

The experience was even worse for some of his former patients. Most
have been unable to find adequate care, several have died, and two
dozen of them had to apply for full disability -- including patients
who had previously been earning a living and paying taxes.

"What you are seeing is the clash of the war on drugs conflicting
with the war on pain," says Dr. Scott Fishman, chief of the division
of pain medicine at the University of California Davis. "It has a
chilling effect for health care in the future." This particular
shoot-out is essentially a religious war between a federal agency
that views narcotics as a tool of the Devil, and an awakening medical
profession that has recently re-discovered the value of painkillers
derived from the opium poppy.

Traditionally, opiates have been prescribed only for short term
pain. Using them over the long haul labeled patients as a 'drug
addict'. But recent studies turn that thinking on its head. We now
know patients who use opiates to deaden pain do not get high, and
fewer than two in a hundred become addicted. Additionally, opiates
are virtually harmless to internal organs -- unlike aspirin, Tylenol
and ibuprofen which can damage the stomach, liver and kidneys. Most
important, patients lucky enough to get sufficient opiates to truly
make the pain disappear are often able to forget about suicide and
actually get back to life.

At the moment the lawmen clearly have the upper hand. By publicly
terrorizing pain specialists like Dr. Fisher, they are forcing the
medical profession to abandon the most effective painkillers we've
ever known. As a consequence one American in ten may be living with
chronic pain when relief should be just a phone call away. Those
ranks, however, are about to swell dramatically as the Boomers hit
their 60s. The betting is that this huge demographic wave is going
to alter the political scenery on pain management just as they have
transformed everything else in their path.

Its about time. As Dr. David Brushwood, professor of pharmacy at the
University of Florida puts it, "Interference in medical practice by a
federal agency is intolerable. If the agency insists on an approach
to diversion prevention that misunderstands medical practice and
victimizes pain patients, it has outlived its usefulness."