Below is the comments that I made. Please DO NOT COPY THEM and submit them as yours. If the DEA sees a lot of “identical submissions” will just dilute the impact of what was submitted.

What I did was ask perplexity.ai a half dozen questions. Asking it to refine/expound its previous answer. Ended up asking 5-6 additional questions on the subject matter. 

Then I took all the answers and asked perplexity to created a concise synopsis of all the answers. 

I figured the longer any submission the less that it is likely to be read.

I consider perplexity’s final summary is pretty damning to what the DEA/DOJ and many in our judicial system has – and is – doing to the chronic pain community.

But pretty much what has been done and what is going to be done could. Clearly outlined as a “culling of the herd” or a covert genocide, and there will be little/few stats on the deaths will be tracked or if tracked, never see the light of day.

Below is a link to another blog post that I made with some more information, and links to where you can read the proposal and a link to make your comments

DEA Plans Further Cuts in Oxycodone Supply

here is a link to the entire proposal https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/28/2025-21509/proposed-aggregate-production-quotas-for-schedule-i-and-ii-controlled-substances-and-assessment-of

click here to make your comments:  https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/DEA-2025-0654-0001

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/blood-pressure-drug-recalled-for-possible-cross-contamination/ar-AA1RQr2x

Thousands of bottles of a commonly used prescription drug to treat hypertension has been recalled for possible contamination with another drug.

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Inc., which has U.S. headquarters in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, has recalled multiple lots of bisoprolol fumarate and hydrochlorothiazide tablets (brand name Ziac), because the tablets may have been cross contaminated with other products, according to a recall report published online by the Food and Drug Administration.

The global drug maker, which is headquartered in Mumbai, India, said testing of reserve samples showed presence of traces of ezetimibe, a cholesterol drug the company also produces, according to the recall, posted Dec. 1.

The recall involves an undeclared number of lots of tablets, from 2.5 mg to 6.25 mg dosages, in various sized bottles, manufactured in Madhya Pradesh, India for Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Inc., USA.

These lots were recalled:

USA TODAY has reached out to Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. Neither Glenmark nor the FDA have issued guidance on what to do with the recalled tablets.

But according to GoodRx, anyone affected by a drug recall is advised to check their medication’s lot number, contact their pharmacist as well as their prescriber and throw away the recalled medication.

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“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey, Pharmacist,VP

Nursing home providers praised the move, while one patient group called it “very disappointing”

https://www.medpagetoday.com/geriatrics/generalgeriatrics/118802

The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a Biden-era rule that required a minimum number of healthcare staff in nursing homes.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Tuesday in a press release

it is taking the action “after determining the final rule imposed by the Biden administration disproportionately burdened facilities, especially those serving rural and tribal communities, and jeopardized [patients’] access to care.”

“Today’s decision to repeal these provisions, in alignment with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, underscores HHS’s commitment to practical, sustainable approaches to improving nursing home care, and allows for further opportunity for engagement with community and tribal stakeholders,” the release stated.

“Safe, high-quality care is essential, but rigid, one-size-fits-all mandates fail patients,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in the release. “This administration will safeguard access to care by removing federal barriers — not by imposing requirements that limit patient choice.”

Mehmet Oz, MD, MBA, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said in the release that “At CMS, our mission is not only to improve outcomes, but to ensure those outcomes are achievable for all communities. We cannot meet that goal by ignoring the daily realities facing rural and underserved populations. This repeal is a step toward smarter, more practical solutions that truly work for the American people.”

The rule, enacted in May 2024

by the Biden administration, required nursing homes that participate in federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to meet a total nurse staffing standard of 3.48 hours per resident day (HPRD), which must include at least 0.55 HPRD of direct registered nurse (RN) care and 2.45 HPRD of direct nurse aide care, according to a CMS fact sheet

. Facilities could use any combination of nurse staff (RNs, licensed practical nurses [LPNs] and licensed vocational nurses, or nurse aides) to account for the additional 0.48 HPRD needed to comply with the total nurse staffing standard, the agency said. The rule also required nursing homes to have an RN on site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to provide skilled nursing care.

CMS gave nursing homes 2 years to comply with some parts of the rule and 3 years for other parts; rural facilities were given extra time. However, Republicans and nursing home organizations pushed back on the rule

, saying it would force some nursing homes to close. Two large nursing home provider organizations sued over the regulations; a federal court judge ruled in their favor and struck down several of the rule’s key provisions. In addition, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act delayed implementation of the rule for 10 years. Tuesday’s announcement was not a surprise, because HHS in August had sent the proposed rescission

to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

Nursing home and hospital groups praised the rule’s rescission. “The CMS staffing mandate repeal is a much-needed recognition of the very real barriers that our nursing home members navigate in recruiting and retaining staff,” Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit aging services providers, said in a statement. “We will continue to engage with federal policymakers and advocate for meaningful investments in the long-term care workforce and the advancement of smart policies to realize the necessary numbers of trained and qualified nurse aides, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and other [nursing home] caregivers.”

The American Hospital Association (AHA) also applauded the move. “The AHA applauds CMS’s repeal of the misguided minimum staffing requirements for long-term care facilities,” Stacey Hughes, the AHA’s executive vice president for government relations and public policy, said in a statement. “The AHA has repeatedly raised concerns that the requirements could exacerbate workforce shortages, lead to facility closures, and jeopardize access to care, especially in rural and underserved communities that often do not have the workforce levels to support these requirements.”

But nursing home consumer groups felt otherwise. “We were very disappointed by CMS’s announcement today,” Sam Brooks, director of public policy for the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, a patient advocacy group, wrote in an email to MedPage Today. “Even though it claimed the rescission was in part due to congressional and judicial developments, it repeated the often-debunked lines from the nursing home industry that there are not enough staff and that rural facilities will be harmed. Both of these claims are not true.”

“The rule had numerous opportunities for exceptions, meaning that nursing homes with legitimate hiring challenges would be exempted from compliance,” he continued. “Further, there was no evidence rural facilities would have a harder time complying [than] non-rural facilities…. The real problem is that nursing homes treat workers poorly and cannot retain them.”

“Most disheartening was that CMS offered no plan to address the staffing crisis in nursing homes,” Brooks added. “Instead, it is returning to the status quo, which results … in residents suffering and dying because nursing homes are not staffed adequately.”

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Former DEA agent charged with agreeing to launder millions of dollars for Mexican drug cartel

https://www.bastillepost.com/global/article/5430623-former-dea-agent-charged-in-alleged-deal-to-launder-millions-of-dollars-for-mexican-drug-cartel

NEW YORK (AP) — A former high-level agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and an associate have been charged with conspiring to launder millions of dollars and obtain military-grade firearms and explosives for a Mexican drug cartel, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in New York.

Paul Campo, 61, of Oakton, Virginia, who retired from the DEA in 2016 after a 25-year career, and Robert Sensi, 75, of Boca Raton, Florida, were caught in sting involving a law enforcement informant who posed as a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, prosecutors said.

The cartel, also know as CJNG, was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. in February.

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Campo betrayed his DEA career by helping the cartel, which he said was responsible for “countless deaths through violence and drug trafficking in the United States and Mexico.”

Campo and Sensi appeared Friday afternoon before a magistrate judge in New York, who ordered them detained without bail. Their lawyers entered not guilty pleas on their behalf.

Campo’s lawyer, Mark Gombiner, called the indictment “somewhat sensationalized and somewhat incoherent.” He denied the two men had agreed to explore obtaining weapons for the cartel.

Over the past year, Campo and Sensi agreed to launder about $12 million in drug proceeds for the cartel and converted about $750,000 in cash to cryptocurrency, thinking it was going to the group when it really went to the U.S. government, the indictment said. They also provided a payment for about 220 kilograms of cocaine they were told would be sold in the U.S. for about $5 million, thinking they would get a cut of the proceeds, prosecutors said.

The two men also said they would look into procuring commercial drones, AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, M4 carbines, grenade launchers and rocket-propelled grenades for the cartel, the indictment said.

Campo boasted about his law enforcement experience during conversations with the informant and offered to be a “strategist” for the cartel, authorities said. He began his career as a DEA agent in New York and rose to become deputy chief of financial operations for the agency, the indictment said.

Evidence in the case includes hours of recordings of the two men talking with the informant, as well as cellphone location data, emails and surveillance images, Assistant U.S. Attorney Varun Gumaste said in court Friday.

Sensi’s attorney, Amanda Kramer, unsuccessfully argued that Sensi should be freed while he awaits trial, saying he wouldn’t flee partly because he has multiple health problems, including injuries from a fall two months ago, early-stage dementia and Type II diabetes.

Sensi was convicted in the late 1980s and early 1990s of mail fraud, defrauding the government and stealing $2.5 million, said the prosecutor, Gumaste. He said evidence shows Sensi also was engaged in a scheme to procure military-grade helicopters for a Middle East country.

DEA Administrator Terrance Cole said in a statement that while Campo is no longer employed by the DEA, the allegations undermine trust in law enforcement.

The DEA has been roiled in recent years by several embarrassing instances of misconduct in its ranks. The Associated Press has tallied at least 16 agents over the past decade brought up on federal charges ranging from child pornography and drug trafficking to leaking intelligence to defense attorneys and selling firearms to cartel associates, revealing gaping holes in the agency’s supervision.

Starting in 2021, the agency placed new controls on how DEA funds can be used in money laundering stings, and warned agents they can now be fired for a first offense of misconduct if serious enough, a departure from prior administrations.

Campo and Sensi are charged with four conspiracy counts related to narcoterrorism, terrorism, narcotics distribution and money laundering.

Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.

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New research from JAMA Neurology just dropped, and the numbers are staggering.

According to this national analysis, more than half of American adults meet criteria for disorders of the nervous system. And this count does not even include many major psychiatric conditions like depression, anxiety, PTSD, or substance use disorders.

That means the true burden on our nervous systems is likely far higher than what the study captured. Yet as a healthcare system and as a society, we often under-attend to these conditions compared with other organ systems.

To put the study in context
🧠 Over 50 percent of adults screened met criteria for at least one neurologic condition
🧠 The most common were migraine, tension-type headache, neuropathic pain, ADHD, and autism
🧠 The prevalence was consistent across demographic groups, showing this is not a niche issue
🧠 These conditions carry significant personal, economic, and societal impact

The brain is not separate from the rest of medicine. It is the command center of the nervous system, and this study reinforces why we need more clinicians who are trained and comfortable treating the brain and central nervous system health across settings.

If more than half the country is experiencing these disorders, then nervous system health is not a specialty issue. It is a public health issue.

Full study here: https://lnkd.in/eppPxs8X

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Below is a good example why NO ONE should believe the first answer that one would get when asking a AI program a question. I first asked the AI program about the safety of a person taking both a opioid and Benzo concurrently and if at some point if the pt has no problem taking the two together, does the risk of the pt having little/no problem going forward, and gave the consistent answer was there was ALWAYS a risk of the pt having a problem.

I changed the question to reflect the typical chronic pain pt who has had a need for being prescribed concurrently a opioid and benzo for many years or a few decades. The answer is quite a bit different, starting to point out the adverse health issues that the pt may experience if the opioid and benzo was decreased or stopped.

Question: Are there any studies on a pt being taken off concurrently taking a opioid & benzo for a couple of decades without any adverse events and the pt is taken off the benzo what is the potential for the pt to experience high anxiety levels, perhaps some depression from loss of sleep and perhaps increased suicidal idealization?

1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2813161
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10733804/
3. https://www.ccjm.org/content/92/9/531
4. https://www.vumc.org/poison-control/sites/default/files/QOW/Experiences%2520with%2520BZ%2520use.pdf
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2047018/
6. https://www.benzoinfo.com/ashtonmanual/chapter3/
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12171941/
8. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.13582
9. https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m283
10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK614569/
11. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/benzodiazepine-discontinuation-associated-with-increased-mortality-in-patients-on-stable-long-term-benzodiazepines
12. https://www.cureus.com/articles/358611-suicidal-ideation-and-suicide-completion-in-benzodiazepine-users-a-systematic-review-of-current-evidence
13. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/benzodiazepine/length-of-withdrawal
14. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6544552/
15. https://www.substanceusehealth.ca/resource/benzodiazepine-discontinuation-and-mortality-among-patients-receiving-long-term
16. https://www.pbm.va.gov/pbm/academicdetailingservice/documents/benzodiazepine_provider_ad_educational_guide.pdf
17. https://www.samhsa.gov
18. https://www.rutgers.edu/news/va-investigates-impact-opioids-sedatives-veterans
19. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589979125000137
20. https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/03-09-2023/docs/D1A22FBD9C95378822926AC6A651D159975B713CD575?noSaveAs=1

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The note below IN RED I got today from a 60 y/o disabled female and on abt 90 MMEs of opioids for some 10-15 yrs. A couple of months ago, her pain doc decided to cut her oral opioids down to 15-20 MME/day and put a buprenorphine patch on her without any attempt to give her body to metabolize the opioid MMEs she was taking. 

This threw her into a COLD/HARD WITHDRAWAL and per BP spiked to 240/120. After several back/forth messages – I finally got her to agree to take the patch off and go to the local ED. Where she was placed in ICU and blood tests indicated that there was some cardiac enzymes – suggesting that she could be in a heart attack and/or having some cardiac muscle damage happening.

Her pain doc insisted that she put the patch back on and it would not cause her BP to spike

Her pain doc told her that he was prescribing a “different medication” to take and when she told me what it was… it was the same medication – but the one you put on your tongue, under your tongue or between cheek and gum, and will rot the pt’s teeth.

She has found a new pain doc who put her back on the opioids that she had been taking for 10-15 yrs and her blood pressure is once again “normal-tensive”

As this pt put it… following my advice… gave her a new lease on life

My b p. Was 120/90 at the Dr today. I got the. Mast virus that’s going around ugh you should be a Dr. cause. You was. A 10000 percent right. By putting me on the 15 it would. Bring it. Down. Hmmm Yes I am forever Grateful. For You, you gave me a new lease on life

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7 deaths, hundreds of injuries may be linked to glucose monitor errors

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/7-deaths-hundreds-of-injuries-may-be-linked-to-glucose-monitor-errors/ar-AA1RDKn5

Patients are being warned to stop using some glucose monitors made by Abbott Diabetes Care after the company found malfunctioning sensors may be linked to hundreds of adverse events and several deaths, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday. 

Internal testing by Abbott found that some sensors in certain FreeStyle Libre 3 and FreeStyle Libre 3 Plus devices may provide incorrect low glucose readings, the company said in a news release. Abbott said it had received reports of 736 adverse events potentially linked to the issue. Fifty-seven were reported in the United States. Seven deaths, none of which were in U.S., were potentially associated with the sensor error, Abbott said. The FDA referred to the error as a “potentially high-risk issue” in a news release. 

People with diabetes depend on glucose readings to manage their care. Incorrect low readings can lead to excessive carbohydrate intake or skipped or delayed insulin doses, Abbott said. Those decisions “may pose serious health risks, including potential injury or death,” the company said. 

The sensor issue was related to one production line among the several that make the Libre 3 and Libre 3 Plus sensors, Abbott said. About three million devices are affected, about half of which are estimated to have expired or been used. 

Anyone using a Libre 3 or Libre 3 Plus sensor should check its model number and unique device identifiers to see if it is one of the affected devices, the FDA and Abbott said.  

The model numbers for the affected FreeStyle Libre 3 sensors are 72081-01 and 72080-01, and the unique device identifiers are 00357599818005 and 00357599819002. The model numbers for the affected FreeStyle Libre 3 sensors are 78768-01 and 78769-01, and the unique device identifiers are 00357599844011 and 00357599843014. The full list of affected lots is available on the FDA’s website. 

Anyone with an impacted device should stop using it, Abbott and the FDA said. Patients can request free replacement devices on www.FreeStyleCheck.com, Abbott said. Patients should use a blood glucose meter or the built-in meter on a FreeStyle Libre 3 Reader to make treatment decisions when sensor readings don’t match symptoms or expectations, Abbott said. 

Abbott and the FDA said that FreeStyle Libre 3 readers and mobile apps have not been impacted, and that no other Libre-brand sensors are affected by the sensor issue. The cause of the sensor issue has been identified and resolved, Abbott said, and no supply disruptions are expected. 

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According to perplexity.ai the USA’s population was 318 million in 2014 and 340 million in 2024, a 7% INCREASE in our population. If one come to the conclusion that the percentage of our population is going to need opioids for acute/chronic pain and the DEA decreases the available Oxycodone by 6%.

This law – 42 USC 1395: apparently this law was appended along with Pres Johnson’s “great society” program that created Medicare & Medicaid in 1965. So we are approaching 60 yrs that not a single DOJ has bothered to try to enforce this law.

When the “Great Society” was created in 1965 our national debt was 260 billion and today about national debt is in the ~ 35 Trillion and roughly 36–38% of the U.S. population had Medicare or Medicaid coverage in 2014.

The question has to be asked – how many people are on Medicare Disability & Medicaid because their pain management meds have been taken away by various parts of our bureaucratic/judicial system? How many chronic pain pts are no longer around because they could no longer tolerate their torturous level of pain and committed suicide or died a premature death from their under/untreated pain.

here is a link to the entire proposal https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/28/2025-21509/proposed-aggregate-production-quotas-for-schedule-i-and-ii-controlled-substances-and-assessment-of

click here to make your comments:  https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/DEA-2025-0654-0001

435 members of the House are up for re-election next year and 35 Senators are up for re-election next year.

Then there is the agreement between most state AG’s and the 3 major drug wholesalers that control about 85% of the wholesale community pharmacy market

Agreement with State Attorney Generals and three major (short version)

agreement with state AGs (long version)

Then there is this law from 1935 – 35 yrs before the Controlled Substance Act was signed into law

42 USC 1395: Prohibition against any Federal interference

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:42%20section:1395%20edition:prelim)

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