PAIN CAN BE SUBDUED

Sadly, numerous injured or sick Americans suffer severe pain. Sadly, many
terminal patients are wracked by agony.

Potent painkillers are available to ease this suffering -- but America's
hysteria over narcotics interferes with their care. Conservative
politicians try to prevent dying people from using marijuana medically to
soothe their distress. And many doctors hesitate to prescribe adequate
doses of palliatives such as OxyContin because they fear that federal drug
agents may file criminal charges against them.

It's true that a few patients resell their prescription painkillers as
street drugs. And it may be true that an extremely rare few physicians are
so hard up for income that they cooperate with this illicit traffic. But
this abuse is small, compared to the giant number of patients who use
painkillers correctly.

Thirty state attorneys general (not including West Virginia's) recently
asked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to be less rigid in dealing
with doctors who prescribe painkillers.

For terminal patients, they wrote to the DEA, "adequate pain management is
often difficult to obtain. One key contributor to this problem is that many
physicians fear investigations and enforcement actions if they prescribe
adequate levels of opioids or have many patients with prescriptions for
pain medications."

This is a cruel situation. Surely, the DEA can show mercy to the sickest
Americans by letting doctors treat them properly. We agree with the
conclusion of the attorneys general:

"What has changed during the past century, and is expected to continue to
change in the future, is that improvements in health sciences have not only
allowed people to live longer, but have also prolonged the process of dying
for most people in the United States. Not only are more people suffering
from chronic diseases than in the past, when death was earlier and quicker,
but many are dying following prolonged suffering in pain.... These
realities make it imperative that DEA consider the impact of its policies
on the legitimate treatment of pain."