Now every pain specialist in the country is acutely aware that merely writing a prescription for a legal drug could land them in jail if the medication winds up in the wrong hands.

So what does the post-Hurwitz landscape look like?

Dr. Hurwitz's conviction did not clarify when he crossed the line into criminality. The resulting uncertainty, Dr. Campbell says, is making physicians nationwide afraid to adjust doses upward until their pain is relieved. They simply don't know where the line is between a legal dose and a prescription that will land them in jail.

That is going to leave millions of Americans without adequate pain relief. The editorial concludes:

The system is indeed broken when the federal government is more concerned about the welfare of drug addicts than the 25 million Americans identified in a 2002 National Institutes of Health study who live with unrelenting pain - while the means to alleviate it remains just beyond their reach.

I'm not sure I get the reference to "more concerned about the welfare of drug addicts." I don't think the Government has shown any concern for drug addicts. That comment seems to come from out of left field.

I agree the feds should be castigated for their campaign against pain doctors, but why not advocate compassion for all drug addicts, instead of limiting it to those chronically in pain? What the editorial does is segregate drug users by categories that seem to break down into "justified drug use" and "unjustified drug use." That is a line that can be as difficult to draw as the line between acceptable prescribing and over-prescribing.

USA Today is also covering the problem of targeting doctors for prescriptions. Radley Balko comments here.
[link via Memeorandum.}