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Title: State of Pain! Post by hdido on Jul 19th, 2005, 12:25pm This sad, scary story is from today's New York Times. I find it interesting-and frightening for the rest of the US-that this took place in Florida where George Bush's brother is governor; I hope that in this time of paranoia that such a law doesn't become national. What has happened to our country? Op-Ed Columnist Punishing Pain By JOHN TIERNEY Published: July 19, 2005 Zephyrhills, Fla. When I visited Richard Paey here, it quickly became clear that he posed no menace to society in his new home, a high-security Florida state prison near Tampa, where he was serving a 25-year sentence. The fences, topped with razor wire, were more than enough to keep him from escaping because Mr. Paey relies on a wheelchair to get around. Mr. Paey, who is 46, suffers from multiple sclerosis and chronic pain from an automobile accident two decades ago. It damaged his spinal cord and left him with sharp pains in his legs that got worse after a botched operation. One night he woke up convinced that the room was on fire. "It felt like my legs were in a vat of molten steel," he told me. "I couldn't move them, and they were burning." His wife, Linda, an optometrist, supported him and their three children as he tried to find an alternative to opiates. "At first I was mad at him for not being able to get better without the medicines," she said. "But when he's tried every kind of therapy they suggested and he's still curled up in a ball at night crying from pain, what else can he do but take more medicine?" The problem was getting the medicine from doctors who are afraid of the federal and local crusades against painkillers. Mr. Paey managed to find a doctor willing to give him some relief, but it was a "vegetative dose," in his wife's words. "It was enough for him to lay in bed," Mrs. Paey said. "But if he tried to sit through dinner or use the computer or go to the kids' recital, it would set off a crisis, and we'd be in the emergency room. We kept going back for more medicine because he wasn't getting enough." As he took more pills, Mr. Paey came under surveillance by police officers who had been monitoring the prescriptions. Although they found no evidence that he'd sold any of the drugs, they raided his home and arrested him. What followed was a legal saga pitting Mr. Paey against his longtime doctor (and a former friend of the Paeys), who denied at the trial that he had given Mr. Paey some of the prescriptions. Mr. Paey maintains that the doctor did approve the disputed prescriptions, and several pharmacists backed him up at the trial. Mr. Paey was convicted of forging prescriptions. He was subject to a 25-year minimum penalty because he illegally possessed Percocet and other pills weighing more than 28 grams, enough to classify him as a drug trafficker under Florida's draconian law (which treats even a few dozen pain pills as the equivalent of a large stash of cocaine). Scott Andringa, the prosecutor in the case, acknowledged that the 25-year mandatory penalty was harsh, but he said Mr. Paey was to blame for refusing a plea bargain that would have kept him out of jail. Mr. Paey said he had refused the deal partly out of principle - "I didn't want to plead guilty to something that I didn't do" - and partly because he feared he'd be in pain the rest of his life because doctors would be afraid to write prescriptions for anyone with a drug conviction. If you think that sounds paranoid, you haven't talked to other chronic-pain patients who've become victims of the government campaigns against prescription drugs. Whether these efforts have done any good is debatable (and a topic for another column), but the harm is clear to the millions of patients who aren't getting enough medicine for their pain. Mr. Paey is merely the most outrageous example of the problem as he contemplates spending the rest of his life on a three-inch foam mattress on a steel prison bed. He told me he tried not to do anything to aggravate his condition because going to the emergency room required an excruciating four-hour trip sitting in a wheelchair with his arms and legs in chains. The odd thing, he said, is that he's actually getting better medication than he did at the time of his arrest because the State of Florida is now supplying him with a morphine pump, which gives him more pain relief than the pills that triggered so much suspicion. The illogic struck him as utterly normal. "We've become mad in our pursuit of drug-law violations," he said. "Generations to come will look back and scarcely believe what we've done to sick people." E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com For Further Reading: For more information on Richard Paey's case and others like it, visit the Pain Relief Network. Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The DEA’s War on Prescription Painkillers (pdf) by Ronald T. Libby. Cato Institute, 28 pp., June 2005. Cartoons by Richard Paey. Next Article in Opinion (12 of 13) >Related Articles ESSAY; Doctors Behind Bars: Treating Pain Is Now Risky Business (October 19, 2004) $ National Briefing | Washington: Pain-Pill Policy (August 12, 2004) New Ways to Loosen Addiction's Grip (August 3, 2004) $ Pill Thefts Alter the Look of Rural Drugstores (July 6, 2004) $ Related Searches PainDrug Abuse and TrafficCrime and CriminalsFlorida Inside NYTimes.com |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by JJA on Jul 19th, 2005, 3:14pm It's sad when a drug law does more harm than the drug itself. Jesse |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by Jimmy_B on Jul 20th, 2005, 8:52am I am completely saddened and sickened. Legitimate pain patients are suffering because of the small percentage of addicts and drug dealers who can't control their urges. There is plenty of stories of terminal cancer patients who are sadly under-medicated due to these laws. Even though most cluster patients don't use or have use for opioids...the fact that we go through horrible pain should make us empathetic to the patients who suffer from dehabilitating pain that opioids do address. Jimmy |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by BMoneeTheMoneeMan on Jul 20th, 2005, 10:05am You can understand maybe that 1 police officer might be too rediculous. Or maybe 1 judge, or maybe your lawyer is a goof ball and that's why you are in a big mess. But how can the entire police and justice system be so wrong in their pursuit to serve the community? You got meth everywhere in the country causing major harm to civilians, and this dude in a wheelchair, who got prescriptions filled at a pharmacist, is in jail for having pain pills. How can the entire system be so far off the mark from start to end? How is it possible? PF wishes BMonee |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by vig on Jul 20th, 2005, 6:38pm all of them, the policeman, the judge, the lawyers have discretion built into their job, so they can recognize when something in the system goes awry. Not one of them stepped up to the plate. sad but I'm sure the new Supreme Court Justices will be wise enough to right these wrongs. ;) |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by JJA on Jul 21st, 2005, 8:52am Not the judge. The Florida government decided how long he should be sentenced, years before, without consideration of the circumstances. He triggered a 25-year mandatory minimum which means the judge had to give at least 25 years if he was found guilty. Mandatory minimums take discretion away from judges (as well as fill prisons with nonviolent drug offenders, forcing the early release of murderers, rapists and child molesters). The prosecutor certainly could have done something. It seems most prosecutors are more interested in getting long sentences than getting justice. Jesse |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by hdido on Jul 21st, 2005, 12:10pm What I find really amazing about this whole situtation is that the man has been fitted with a morphine pump IN PRISON and is now getting enough morphine to ease his pain and make his life bearable......since he got 25 years for having a few pills, imagine what kind of sentence he would have gotten had he had a morphine pump while a free man! I wonder why Jeb Bush doesn't step in to try to get this poor guy out of prison. He did all that he could to prevent Terry Schivo's husband from ending her misery and she was brain dead with no chance of recovery (and this was proven after the autopsy-her brain had shrunk to about 1/3 the size of a normal brain). I guess that the "right to life" groups don't care about a cripple in prison for using drugs...legal though they were...and therefore Jeb doesn't care because he won't be able to get any votes out of the situation. I wonder if the same god that talks to George also talks to Jeb. |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by thomas on Jul 21st, 2005, 12:38pm The whole problem is the doctor not testifieing that he authorized the prescription. Put the torches out and send the lynch mob home people. You are after the wrong people. Besides this is a very biased article written to elicit a predetermined response, which is exactly what has happened here. |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by thomas on Jul 21st, 2005, 12:40pm And for those of you who want to lay this in President Bush's lap, where is your outrage for the people that Bill Clinton killed in Waco and |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by vig on Jul 21st, 2005, 1:12pm on 07/21/05 at 12:40:07, thomas wrote:
ruby ridge occurred in August of 1992. Clinton was inaugurated in January of 1993 Daddy Bush was still pres for that one.... and this one is a consequence of the War on Drugs, which all presidents have supported.... right? |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by thomas on Jul 21st, 2005, 1:24pm on 07/21/05 at 13:12:26, vig wrote:
The only president who really supported the war on drugs was Ronaldus Magnus. The rest just pay lip service. (Including the Bushes) |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by nani on Jul 21st, 2005, 1:29pm It was during Daddy Bush's administration when many of the new drug laws (like property seizure) were enacted. As an aside: Any druggie knows that the best and easiest to get drugs are in prison. Apparently, prison guards don't get paid much and a whole lot of them like to supplement their income. |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by vig on Jul 21st, 2005, 2:28pm I'm still waiting to see the outcome on Rush Limbaugh's case. we'll see if he has to pay any price for HIS problem. |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by thomas on Jul 21st, 2005, 2:44pm on 07/21/05 at 14:28:19, vig wrote:
I'm sure he will get equall treatment as did Robert Downey Jr. |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by hdido on Jul 21st, 2005, 4:27pm Limbaugh will probably be sentenced to write a book about himself in one year and then actually pay taxes on the millions that he makes from it-sorry, have to stop writing, the tears are burning my eyes. :'( |
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Title: Re: State of Pain! Post by Jimmy_B on Jul 22nd, 2005, 9:49am http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9365/db12gj.gif |
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