Pro-Narcotics
Home Up Codeine Darvon Demerol DepoDur Dilaudid Fentanyl Heroin Methadone Morphine Nalbuphine Oxycontin Oxymorphone Talwin Suboxone Stadol Tramadol Vicodin Doping Children For Surgery For Cancer For Other Pain Regulation Pro-Narcotics Ibogaine Patient Survey JCAHO

 
Pain Relief Promotions Act

Not only are certain drug companies vigorously promoting a narcotic ridden world, but so are some well intentioned patient groups and a number of foolish pro-drug fanatics.  Actually, legalization of narcotics has already been tried.  In Singapore, in the 1800s, when it was a British colony, the British would grow opium on plantations in their colonies in India and then sell it in Singapore and China.  In Singapore, the tax on opium provided 85% of the financing for the British colonial government.  When opium was finally banned in 1929, 29% of all Singapore adult males were opium addicts.

In fact, Britain fought and defeated China in two wars in the 1800s, the Opium Wars, in order to defend its "right" to sell opium to Chinese drug addicts without the interference of the Chinese government.  In the second war, Britain destroyed some of the Chinese emperor's palaces in Beijing. 

The British had the Chinese so hooked on opium, that Chinese workers in the Gold Rush in San Francisco were widely characterized by their plentiful opium dens.  Opium addiction in China was finally stomped out by Mao Tsetung and provided an excuse for his communist dictatorship.

Nepal also had unrestricted drugs in the second half of the 20th century.  Not only was a sizeable percentage of the adult population addicted to opium, but Nepal had by far the highest rate of nicotine addiction with 89% of all adults, men and women, suffering from nicotine dependence.

Of course, modern legalization would be worse than anything in the past.  For one, traditional breaks on drug usage, such as church and the extended family, have much less influence.  For another, many more drugs are now available, which can be abused in many more ways.  Also, people have much more money and time to waste, and governmental programs paying for disability, etc., lessen or drag out the human tragedy of drugs.  The spread of AIDS by drug users will actually increase, as they have in the very liberal Netherlands and other areas in Europe where heroin possession is no longer against the law.  Of course, the taxpayer is stuck paying the bill.  Also, legalization won't eliminate crime.  Tobacco and alcohol are the two most commonly stolen items in the U.S.   Alcohol, despite being legal, is a major cause of crime.  Legalization of methamphetamine and cocaine will certainly cause a dramatic increase in violence and mental illness and well as neglect and abuse of children.  Addicted women will damage their children in utero in much larger numbers.  Public resources to deal with such a catastrophe simply won't be adequate. 

http://opioids.com/ is a British pro-legalization site with bizarre dreams of a perfect world where everyone walks around in narcotic bliss.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/index.shtml is a Washington, D.C.-based organization out to eliminate any regulation of "recreational" drugs whatsoever.  At the same time, they advocate large amounts of public money be spent to take care of drug addicts, i.e., "harm reduction."  It is run by David Borden, a person with a master's degree in Jazz.  They are closed linked with Arnold Trebach, founder of the Drug Policy Foundation.  They also share employees and leadership with Flex Your Rights, another similar organization, and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for Sensible Drug Policy.  They want full legalization.  They also want to repeal the Drug Provision of the Higher Education Act, a 1998 law that has delayed or denied taxpayer financial assistance to 175,000 young people convicted of breaking a state or federal drug offense. They are members of the International Anti-Prohibitionist League which appears to be a similarly small organization.

There are many crusading organizations out to make narcotics more accessible, thinking that high doses of narcotics are the answer to chronic pain.  Pain and the Law is trying to make protect doctors from the tragic effects of the narcotic they prescribe.  Thereby, they hope that highly addictive narcotics will be even more available than they are today.  http://www.painandthelaw.org/malpractice/index.php

Swiss voted defeated an effort to legalize heroin by a 3 to 1 margin. Nov. 30, 1998. USA Today.

The opiate lobbies are numerous and financially very powerful.  Huge numbers of physicians and many pharmaceutical companies are making money using opiates.  Opiate medication sales approach $14 billion per year worldwide, dwarfing any moneys being earned by Afghanistan peasants growing heroin.

The American Academy of Pain Medicine and the American Pain Society are both housed in the same building in Glenview, Illinois.  Both organizations strongly promote the further increased use of narcotics in pain management and pay no attention whatsoever to evidence-based medicine and evidence-based pain relief when it comes to their promotion of opiates.  Their policy statement trivializes the problem with patients being turned into drug addicts and having their lives damaged by "pain doctors." 

The AAPM and APS say nothing about the terrible problem of addiction which doctors cause, the huge amounts of their medicines that reach the street market, the lives that are damaged, the sizeable number of doctors pushing opiates, or the tremendous ease of obtaining narcotics from physicians.  The AAPM and APS say nothing about the over-reliance of doctors on opiates and the depriving of patients of other forms of pain relief.

Quite to the contrary, the joint AAPM and APS policy statement talks of "undertreatment of pain," i.e., doctors not giving out opiates freely enough.  They advocate opiates for patients previously addicted to opiates, something which is about as unethical as you can get.  They say that there is simply no limit to how high of a dose of opiate pain medicine a doctor should be allowed to give a patient.  They falsely claim, "Studies indicate that the de novo development of addiction when opioids are used for the relief of pain is low."  There simply are no such studies of opiate prescribing in every day clinical practice that are worthy of the least credibility.  The AAPM and APS are definitely part of the problem, not the solution. http://www.ampainsoc.org/

Pain Journals

Thttp://www.hospicecare.com/journals_publications.htm#16 

Journal of Pain Symptom Management http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505775/description#description 

Journal of Cancer Pain & Symptom Palliation ($60) v http://www.haworthpress.com/store/product.asp?sid=TAB6W01USGN78MP67WM1MU0KPW53FGM6&sku=J427&AuthType=2 

Journal of Pain is the official journal of the American Pain Society http://www.ampainsoc.org; 

Pain is the journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) http://www.iasp-pain.org/index.html  

Acute Pain is a clinically oriented journal, i.e., light of scientific evidence ($124).  http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622996/description#description

European Journal of Pain; is the journal of the European Chapters of the IASP http://www.efic.org Triennial meeting in Istanbul Sept. 13-16, 2006. May 15th is deadline for submissions. It is also a journal of the IAHPC

Journal of Palliative Care is published by the Center for Bioethics in Montreal, Canada. ($85) http://www.ircm.qc.ca/bioethique/english/publications/journal_of_palliative_care.html

Journal of Palliative Medicine is the official publication of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine ($160 for affiliate members)  http://www.aahpm.org

Pain Medicine News   http://www.painmedicinenews.com/indexpub.cfm?pubid=26 Free on-line. Simple news.

The Legal Side of Pain appears to be a website devoted to defending physicians prescribing opiates and related issues.  http://www.legalsideofpain.com/

The Journal of Opioid Management http://www.opioidmanagement.com

Legal Pain Quarterly

 

Opiate Manufacturers Closely Tied to Pain Clinics

Pain.com is a website handsomely funded by Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Oxycontin and other opiates, and Cephalon, the manufacturer of Provigil, an expensive and hot selling stimulant used to fight off sleep. The drug companies fund free CME courses and links to over 3,000 pain clinics.  Obviously, opiate manufacturers have a great interest in promoting pain clinics. 

 

Opioid Management Society Promotes Opiates for Pain

Robert Enck, oncologist at the Thomas Jefferson Medical School claims that opiates are "powerful, quality of life enhancing painkillers."  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He runs the Opioid Management Society, running courses for physicians prescribing opiates.  He is the Editor of the Journal of Opioid Management.  The Society promotes "the proper use" of opiates for all types of pain.  They have a large Advisory Board of big names from major medical schools, etc. http://www.opioidmanagementsociety.org/Export3.htm#EducationalAdvisoryBoard

 

The American Chronic Pain Association and it's North American Chronic Pain Association of Canada (NACPAC) advocates the use of opioids for a wide range of conditions causing severe chronic pain, including lower back pain, inflammatory bowel disease, migraines, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and arthritis.  NACPAC receives heavy funding from Purdue (oxycontin's manufacturer and #1 funder), Endo (makes numerous opiates), Ligand (makes Alinza morphine ER), Cephalon (makes Provigil stimulant), and GlaxoSmithKline (maker of Dexedrine).  Purdue, through the ACPA website, distributes a "Pain Advocacy Tool Kit" to help promote the increased use of opiate narcotics.  The actual kit is downloaded from the Partners Against Pain.com http://www.partnersagainstpain.com/painadvocacycommunity/PAC_Toolkit.htm  Purdue also funds the Pain Advocacy Community.. Richard Payne of Sloan-Kettering and President of the American Pain Society is prominently featured.  Lobbying state licensing boards is the primary target of the very expensively produced 256 page Purdue document.  The booklet advocates contact pharmaceutical company representatives to help network, building mass lobbying efforts.

 

President of American Academy of Pain Management Loses License

On January 31, 2006, the American Academy of Pain Management (the Academy) accepted the resignation of Nelson Hendler, MD from the position of President of the Academy. Dr. Hendler tendered his resignation in advance of the suspension of his medical license by the Maryland Board of Physicians on February 6.  There convention in Orlando in September is heavily supported by pain treatment manufacturers.  It is a safe bet that opiate and stimulant manufacturers will be very well represented.  Everything is for sale, even getting your company's logo on room keys ($3500) and bottles of water ($5,500) and the president's luncheon ($20,000).  Corporate sponsors for the organization are the same dreary list of opiate and stimulant manufacturers: Purdue, Cephalon, Endo, Alpharma (morphine Kadian), and Johnson & Johnson (via Janssen)(IONSYS fentanyl, OROS hydromorphone).