The Trunk

The DEA has forcibly deputized every actor in the manufacture and distribution of these drugs to police everyone else. And they risk severe civil, even criminal, repercussions if the agency determines they’ve done so with insufficient vigor. If you want to survive, you always err on the side of control. So if you’re a wholesaler, and you have the tiniest of suspicions that a pharmacy is dispensing more of a controlled drug than the DEA thinks it should, you cut off supply, or you risk losing your license. If you’re a pharmacy, and you have the faintest hunch that a patient may not be legitimately in pain, or is getting more pain medication than he needs, or that a particular doctor is writing more prescriptions for a controlled drug than the DEA thinks he ought to, you refuse to fill the prescriptions, at risk of both losing your livelihood as a pharmacist, but also possibly your freedom. If you own a pharmacy, and you suspect one of your pharmacists is insufficiently suspicious of pain patients and pain prescriptions, you fire him, or you risk losing your business. And finally, if you’re a doctor, and you suspect any of your patients have a substance abuse problem, or that they aren’t in as much pain as they claim, you turn them down. Actually, it’s worse than that. It doesn’t really matter what you think as a doctor. What matters is what the DEA thinks of the decisions you make. So your job is not to administer the treatment you believe is appropriate, your job is to anticipate what treatment the DEA will think is appropriate, and deviate from that treatment at your peril.

DEA Spots Fly, Wields Sledgehammer | The Agitator

Source: theagitator.com