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Bush Admin. to Crack Down on Painkiller Abuse

The latest, misguided target of the Bush Administration's War on Drugs is prescription abuse--for pain killers, sedatives and stimulants. A crackdown was announced yesterday.

Under the strategy announced Monday, the government will pay states to help develop monitoring systems to track patients' drug use. The programs would flag cases indicating a pattern of abuse, such as ``doctor shopping,'' where a patient gets prescriptions for drugs from multiple physicians.

Federal officials also plan to seek out pharmacies that sell controlled substances illegally over the Internet, which will entail deploying modern Web-crawler technology. to search out those peddling prescription drugs online.

Under President Bush's proposed 2005 budget, funds to attack the illicit use of prescription drugs would increase by $20 million, to $138 million. Most of the money would be directed at reducing the abuse of opium- and morphine-based painkillers, which are among the most widely prescribed medications.

Pain doctors and some advocates for patients with chronic pain say the government has become overzealous and has created a "chilling effect" that keeps many doctors from prescribing painkillers that patients need. They argue that the more pressing problem regarding painkillers is that so many patients in pain are not getting them.

What effect will this have on consumers? Plenty.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports legalizing marijuana for medical use, said Bush's new initiative will have a chilling effect on doctors. ``The principal impact of this campaign when you step up the law enforcement response is that doctors will err on the side of undertreating pain,'' Nadelmann said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and Justice Department have become more aggressive in targeting and prosecuting doctors and pharmacists who they say are improperly prescribing and distributing prescription narcotics, and dozens of health practitioners have been charged in recent years in connection with their prescribing practices. Several are in prison.

Pain doctors and some advocates for patients with chronic pain say the government has become overzealous and has created a "chilling effect" that keeps many doctors from prescribing painkillers that patients need. They argue that the more pressing problem regarding painkillers is that so many patients in pain are not getting them.

"Doctors who prescribe opioids for pain are becoming increasingly intimidated by the government's targeting of legitimate medicine," said Siobhan Reynolds, an advocate with the Pain Relief Network. "We implore our elected representatives to put the needs of ill Americans ahead of the reckless demands of misguided and self-serving government bureaucracies."

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