Pubdate: Mon, 7 Feb 2005
Source: American Medical News (US)
Copyright: 2005 American Medical Association
Contact: http://www.ama-assn.org/apps/amednews/edlet.pl
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1235
Website: http://www.amednews.com/
Author: Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)

DEA SEEKS COMMENTS ON PAIN MED QUESTION

Pain Medicine Experts Seek Balance in Policies on Prescribing Controlled 
Substances.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is preparing a document that
will address its role as defined by the Controlled Substances Act. The
DEA has invited physicians and others to submit comments on what they
would like the document to address.

According to the announcement, published in the Jan. 18 Federal
Register, those interested have until March 21 to submit comments.

The announcement was the latest in a series of notices about a
frequently-asked-questions document on prescribing controlled
substances for pain treatment that was posted on the DEA Web site in
August 2004 and then withdrawn in October.

The document took more than two years to finish and was co-authored by
the DEA, the University of Wisconsin Pain & Policy Studies Group and
the Last Acts Partnership, with Russell K. Portenoy, MD, serving as
the panel's lead expert on pain treatment.

Dr. Portenoy, chair of the Dept. of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care
at New York's Beth Israel Medical Center and faculty member for the
AMA online series on pain treatment, said he had little enthusiasm for
going through the process again.

But PPSG Director David Joranson said it appeared that there were new
people at the DEA working on prescription drug diversion, and they
need to be educated on the issues. "I think everyone in the pain field
- - clinicians, administrators and patients - should take the DEA
request very seriously," he said.

Joranson said the FAQ document was valuable in that it educated
clinicians on law enforcement's drug diversion concerns, and it
informed law enforcement about medical issues.

The president-elect of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, Scott
Fishman, MD, said he would mention this in a letter to the DEA. "It
will reiterate the position of balance, assert that aggressive pain
medicine is possible without perpetuating addiction, and caution
regulators about policies that try to solve the problem of drug
diversion by restricting access to pain medicine of those who
legitimately need them," he said.

The DEA said it had no comment.
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