Balancing opioid crisis with helping patients in chronic pain (2024)

Some medical professionals and pain patients believe the federal crackdown enforcing opioid laws is stifling effective treatment. Federal officials say they’re saving lives.

11 News Investigates reported on raids inTowson,Owings Mills and across the country – some dating back as far as 2011. Federal agents shut down clinics and alleged pill mills, confiscating records as part of a crackdown on the opioid crisis.

Imprisoned doctor calls enforcement ‘witch hunts, inquisition’

Dr. Lonnie Joseph Parker, of Texarkana, Arkansas, spoke with 11 News Investigates in October, days before he self-reported to federal prison.

“I am scheduled to spend 87 months behind bars,” Parker told 11 News Investigates.

He said the Drug Enforcement Administration targeted him, claiming he was overprescribing pain medicines and running a stealth pill mill. He said all he did was help his patients.

“Right now, no doctor in the United States can safely treat any medical problem with any controlled medication without the potential of being arrested, convicted and sent to prison under the criteria that the DEA is using to indict and try doctors,” Parker told 11 News Investigates.

He has talked to at least three Maryland doctors who were concerned about their own medical practices.

“You must choose between doing what’s right for your patient and doing what keeps you safe,” Parker told 11 News Investigates. “The only safe thing to do is not prescribe any controlled medication until these witch hunts, the inquisition stops.”

Feds: Focus is on who supplied the pills

Federal officials deny any witch hunt or inquisition.

“We are the part of the DEA that focuses on the supply chain of controlled-substance pharmaceuticals – from the point of manufacture, through the wholesale distributors all the way down to hospitals, the pharmacies, the medical offices – that’s our world we try to regulate,” Justin Wood, a DEA diversion manager, told 11 News Investigates.

Wood said the objectives are to protect communities and save lives.

“We also want to ensure there is a legitimate and uninterrupted supply of legitimate medications for patients throughout our nation,” Wood told 11 News Investigates.

We just follow where the evidence leads on the pills.

The latest figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the beginning of November show approximately 125 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed in 2023. However, 8.6 million people ages 12 and older reported misusing prescription opioids, and 5 million reported having a prescription-use disorder.

Between 1999 and 2022, the data shows approximately 294,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription opioids.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Levin told 11 News Investigates that many of the criminal investigations begin after an overdose death by asking a main question: Who supplied the pills?

“We just follow where the evidence leads on the pills, and if it leads back to a street dealer, if it leads back to a doctor, that’s where the target is,” Levin told 11 News Investigates.

Patients impacted by enforcement can’t find treatment

Some patients suffering from chronic pain told 11 News Investigates that they’ve been swept up in the crisis as they continue trying to find physicians who can effectively treat them. 11 News Investigates is concealing the identities of the patients.

A woman told 11 News Investigates that after exercise and acupuncture didn’t work, a physician prescribed high doses of opioids for her back and joint pain. Then, the clinic was forced to close.

It’s extremely disheartening to live in constant pain and constant fear.

“The doctors have been shut down, so you’re forced to find another doctor who then gets shut down,” she said. “It’s extremely disheartening to live in constant pain and constant fear for, is this doctor going to be shut down now? Am I going to have to go through this long, arduous search again?”

Now, on her fourth doctor, she said her medications were severely reduced.

“It’s not great. I’m not where I was before. I mean, I suffer on a daily, hourly basis. I functioned better before, but I am functioning. It’s just, you just hang in there,” she said.

‘I flourished once my pain was controlled,’ until …

Another patient told 11 News Investigates that Lyme’s disease caused him severe joint and back pain.

“I flourished once my pain was controlled,” he said.

He said, at one point, he was prescribed high doses of oxycodone and hydromorphone before the opioid crisis crackdown forced his doctor to shut down.

It was tremendous, tragic, horrific, unlike nothing I had experienced physically and psychologically

“It was tremendous, tragic, horrific and unlike nothing I had experienced physically and psychologically,” he said.

He went to another doctor, who eventually “voluntarily retired,” and then a third who severely cut his medicines.

“I wound up engaging in suicidal ideation. I also subjected myself to electroshock therapy. The hope was that they would break the all-consuming depression that I experienced after the forced taper,” he said.

He doesn’t think his current pain management is adequate.

Advocacy groups seek changes in public policy

Dr. Richard “Red” Lawhern, with the National Campaign to Protect People in Pain, and other advocacy groups want changes in public policy.

“What I see is an avalanche of people who are reporting that their doctors are leaving the practice of pain medicine, and they can’t find anyone else to treat them,” Lawhern told 11 News Investigates.

The group doesn’t think doctors should have become targets and has filed complaints with the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services, claiming civil rights violations and fraud.

“The reality is that doctors prescribing to their patients did not create and are not sustaining the U.S. opioid crisis,” Lawhern said.

Focus shifts to fentanyl

Opioid prescriptions written by doctors and filled by pharmacists remain on the DOJ’s radar, but much of the focus has since shifted to combat synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, 11 News Investigates has learned.

“Fentanyl is a crisis unlike any other drug crisis we’ve ever seen,” Wood told 11 News Investigates.

Wood demonstrated how 2 mg of fentanyl on the point of a pencil is enough to kill someone. He said 70% of fake pills seized off the streets are laced with fentanyl.

That’s the scary thing … These pills are pressed to look exactly like legitimate pharmaceuticals.

“That’s the scary thing. People are assuming that they are buying a Percocet or an Adderall or some other pharmaceutical controlled substance. These pills are pressed to look exactly like legitimate pharmaceuticals,” Wood told 11 News Investigates.

“I pulled up the most recent statistics for Maryland: In the past 12 months, we’ve had almost 1,900 overdose deaths, and 1,500 were fentanyl-related,” Levin told 11 News Investigates.

The recently established Maryland Fatal Fentanyl Overdose Task Force is trying to reduce overdose deaths by enforcing drug laws and convicting those who cause them.

Balancing opioid crisis with helping patients in chronic pain (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Kelle Weber

Last Updated:

Views: 6116

Rating: 4.2 / 5 (53 voted)

Reviews: 84% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Kelle Weber

Birthday: 2000-08-05

Address: 6796 Juan Square, Markfort, MN 58988

Phone: +8215934114615

Job: Hospitality Director

Hobby: tabletop games, Foreign language learning, Leather crafting, Horseback riding, Swimming, Knapping, Handball

Introduction: My name is Kelle Weber, I am a magnificent, enchanting, fair, joyous, light, determined, joyous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.