Posted on 05/20/2004 5:50:51 AM PDT by jmc813
When we talk about the federal war on drugs, most people conjure up visions of sinister South American drug cartels or violent urban street gangs. The emerging face of the drug war, however, is not a gangster or a junkie: It’s your friendly personal physician in a white coat. Faced with their ongoing failure to curtail the illegal drug trade, federal drug agencies have found an easier target in ordinary doctors whose only crime is prescribing perfectly legal pain medication. By applying federal statutes intended for drug dealers, federal prosecutors are waging a senseless and destructive war on doctors. The real victims of the new campaign are not only doctors, but their patients as well.
Dr. Cecil Knox of Virginia is one recent victim of federal authorities, who cannot abide physicians using their own judgment when prescribing pain medication. Dr. Knox faces federal criminal charges for prescribing legal pain drugs, and tragically has been forced to spend several hundred thousand dollars defending himself. Virginia state authorities have neither charged him with a crime nor revoked his medical license, yet the federal government- which constitutionally has no authority to usurp state drug laws- perversely seeks to imprison Dr. Knox for life!
Even if Dr. Knox is acquitted of all charges, his life will never be the same. His professional reputation and clientele cannot be easily restored, and the enormous legal bills cannot be easily repaid. So whether federal prosecutors obtain a conviction of Dr. Knox or not, the message sent to other doctors is chillingly clear: prescribe the wrong drugs and we will destroy you. The end result is that doctors become afraid to prescribe pain medication, no matter how appropriate for a patient. The judgment of doctors has been replaced by the judgment of federal drug warriors.
Those who support the war on drugs may well change their views if one day they find themselves experiencing serious pain because of an accident or old age. By creating an atmosphere that regards all powerful pain medication as suspect, the drug warriors have forced countless Americans to live degraded, bedridden lives. Even elderly deathbed patients sometimes are denied adequate pain relief from reluctant doctors and nurses. It’s one thing to support a faraway drug campaign in Colombia or Afghanistan, but it’s quite another to watch a loved one suffering acute pain that could be treated. A sane, compassionate society views advances in medical science- particularly advances that relieve great suffering- as heroic. Instead, our barbaric drug war treats pain patients the same way it treats street junkies.
Doctors are not slaves, and they will not continue practicing medicine forever if the federal government insists on monitoring, harassing, fining, and even jailing them. Congress should take action to rein in overzealous prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and stop the harassment of legitimate physicians who act in good faith when prescribing pain relief drugs. Doctors should not be prosecuted for using their best medical judgment, nor should they be prosecuted for the misdeeds of their patients.
WOD Ping
The controlled substance laws gave government a monopoly on health care.
Anything the government does it does poorly and expensively.
I generally agree with Dr. Paul, and wish there were a hundred more congress critters just like him; however, once a bill is signed into law, the justice system will not selectively enforce it. The problem is not the overzealous prosecution of this law (or other nannystate laws), that's a foregone conclusion. The problem is that legislatures pass these laws at all, and then that even when the unintended consequences clearly outweigh the neglible benefits, they are never repealed.
What are some of the details behind this situation? Sounds to me like the WOsDers are getting what they wished for, just like the environmentalists with gas prices.
That would be justice. However, there's good money to be made in the drug war; I'm sure John Walters can afford to shop for a doctor who will effectively treat any pain he might have, while Joe Average suffers.
Whoa! This guy's a member of the House of Representatives???
And why is he defending Dr. Cecil Knox, who seems like a real sleazeball. Read about "Doctor" drug-dealer Knox here.
Yep. A real scum bag.
STFU Bobbie. Your tripe is getting old. Ron's one of a handful that realizes there is no Constitutional provision for the Federal Drug War. None. Despite your lame attempts to use case law to prove there is. A law that runs contrary to the very document that gives the government power to begin with, is NO LAW. None of your ad homenim attacks or twisted descisions from activist judges have been able to win the day for any of your arguments on these threads for the last couple of YEARS!!
Now shut the hell up while the real adults in this country try to fix the things potato-heads like you have screwed up.
Another day, same agenda.
"Costs to society" is a non-sequiter used a lot by communists and big government types. They completly fail to see that it is even MORE costly to run a war on drugs than it is to allow a free people to take the Darwin route. Not just in lives, but monetarily and in the total amount of freedom that we as US citizens expect to enjoy.
No matter WHAT it takes, we have got to get the doctors OFF THE STREETS!
Once again, Paul is right.
STFU......LOL
The doctor sounds pretty humane and decent to me. He's obviously being railroaded by some persecutors who are utterly unfamiliar with the Constitution for the United States. They should be horsewhipped to within an inch of their worthless lives... and then left to writhe in the same pain they'd inflict on others by eliminating doctors willing to TREAT intractable pain.
Obviously you didn't read the link I provided at post #7:
"Federal prosecutors Rusty Fitzgerald and Pat Hogeboom have characterized Knox's practice as a criminal enterprise, a place where fraud was prevalent and prescriptions were doled out freely, even through a side door. They argue that, in at least 10 cases, those prescriptions led to death or serious injury of Knox's patients.
Humane and decent? Aren't you the least bit objective when it comes to drugs? "Knox's former medical assistant, Tiffany Durham, pleaded guilty Aug. 21 to two felony counts of knowledge that a felony was going on and not letting law enforcement authorities know about it."
Coming from you, that's hilarious. Thanks, I needed a laugh this morning.
He is not a scum-bag, he is a drug dealer and all drug dealers are good.
If there were no drug laws, this poor girl would not have been rail-roaded by those dirty feds ...
Ron Paul is one of the best congressmen around.
"Even if Dr. Knox is acquitted of all charges, his life will never be the same. His professional reputation and clientele cannot be easily restored, and the enormous legal bills cannot be easily repaid. "
I guess the fact that a lot of his patients died of overdoses might mean his reputation has been revealed to the public by the authorities and his bills could be lawsuits for the families of the victims.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.