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That's not how DEA administrator Karen Tandy sees it. "Dr. Hurwitz was no different from a cocaine or heroin dealer peddling poison on the street corner," she told reporters after his sentencing. Prosecutors said Hurwitz prescribed "obscene" amounts of medicine to patients he knew were addicted to cocaine and other drugs. As for the DEA's other investigations and prosecutions, "We're not on a witch hunt," Tandy told TIME. "We are very careful in our investigations. More than 600,000 doctors are registered to prescribe controlled substances. There are a very small number of bad apples." Her agency...
...near doubling of prescription-drug abuse from 1992 to 2003, but because of changes in the way federal statistics were gathered in the past decade, no such claim can be made, the spokesman said. Last month the libertarian Cato Institute issued a report, Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The DEA's War on Prescription Painkillers, charging that the agency exaggerated reports of OxyContin deaths and overdoses. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin and ibuprofen, which can lead to intestinal bleeding, cause 35 times more deaths a year than OxyContin, the Cato report contended, and are far less effective...
...DEA's $154 million drug-diversion campaign is also under attack by state officials. In a stinging 10-page critique issued last March, 32 state attorneys general, led by Oklahoma's Drew Edmondson, charged that the agency's proposed criteria for investigations would force severely ill patients to make frequent, unnecessary doctor visits, thus increasing both their hardship and their co-payments. "DEA is creating a climate that ... discourages good practice," they wrote. Tandy met with a delegation of attorneys general in April to reassure them that "the last thing DEA wants to do is to chill the legitimate prescription...
Since the DEA raid, many of Nelson's patients have been unable to find doctors. Few physicians are trained in the complexities of pain control, and fewer still want to risk government second-guessing. Some of Nelson's patients have suffered acute narcotic-withdrawal symptoms, as he was unable to wean them gradually. Others, unable to cope with their pain, lost their jobs. They have staged demonstrations and press conferences in downtown Billings and mounted petition drives. As one of the few Montana doctors offering opioid therapy, Nelson was "like the Mother Teresa of medicine," says Jeannie Huntley, a marketing...
...knows yet if any of Nelson's patients may have overdosed or illegally sold their meds--and the DEA is keeping mum. But even if he is eventually absolved, the Montana native plans to close his practice. "We thought we were doing everything just about right," he says. "But now a whole bunch of people are sitting out there hurting like hell." --With reporting by Pat Dawson/Billings