DO WE NEED ANOTHER OPIOPHOBIC ATTORNEY IN CONGRESS ?
Came in THIRD PLACE !!
IMO, Indiana’s current Attorney General – Greg Zoeller – has proven himself to be certifiable, carding carrying OPIOPHOBE .
He has gone as far as “forcing” the Indiana Medical License Board to pass EMERGENCY RULE MAKING that required pts who regularly take opiates to be required to take urine testing by their physicians.
Being an attorney, he knew or should have known that such a mandate was UNCONSTITUTIONAL and ILLEGAL and the ACLU took the Medical Licensing Board to court to have the emergency rule making decision as UNCONSTITUTIONAL and ILLEGAL and the ruling was RESCINDED.
Unfortunately, medical practices across Indiana implemented these mandatory urine testing requirements and many practices continue to force chronic pain pts to be subjected to these urine testing, because it is LEGAL for prescribers to implement whatever policies and procedures within their practice. If patients are not happy with a prescriber’s office policies and procedures, they can find another prescriber to provide them care.
After 45 yrs of fighting the war on drugs, why would the Medical Licensing Board issue an emergency regulation concerning urine testing ? Maybe, so that there could be no time for public discussion and pointing out the unconstitutionality of the emergency edict and thus no prescriber practice would be implement these otherwise illegal testing.
Back in 2012 Zoeller’s office started a website http://www.in.gov/bitterpill/ as part of his part of fighting the war on drugs. During Gov Pense and AG Zoeller’s administration, Indiana has been at the top of the list of the number of meth lab busts and pharmacy robberies. While the emergency regulation is restricting the mgs of opiates that a prescriber can prescribe for a individual, causing chronic pain pts to go to the street to try and get some relief from their 24/7 pain. Often they end up getting some sort of “bad drugs” and they end up over dosing and dying.
Do we need another attorney in Congress that by previous actions, thinks nothing of “circumventing the law” to “GET HIS WAY”? The Indiana primary is coming up May 3rd and AG Zoeller has overseen increasing meth lab production/busts in Indiana, highest number of pharmacy robberies in the country, and a HIV +, Hep B&C epidemic in Scott County IN in 2015, increased Heroin use/abuse and overdose deaths.
IMO, Zoeller’s years in office clearly demonstrates that he has little concern for those who suffer from chronic pain and/or those who suffer from the mental health disease of addictive personality disorder. Like all too many attorneys, he only cares about the absolute/unforgiving enforcement of laws that violate many peoples’ basic human rights.
I you live in Indiana 9th Congressional district… blue in the map below .. along the Ohio River… primary election is coming up – May 3rd – and perhaps those in the chronic pain and mental health community should “share their pain” with Zoeller by VOTING FOR ANYONE BUT HIM. You DO NOTHING… you GET NOTHING….
Filed under: General Problems
Steve, something weird is going on with your emails. I got a spam email from you. Sent a reply and got an instant reply with no message. Only way I knew to contact you was through these comments.
steve… just because your side has been winning the war for drugs for so long doesn’t mean that the good people fighting the war against drugs have lost. those who are fighting against the opiazation (<– new word. tell them where you heard it first) of our fellow citizens have plenty of reasons to continue fighting this war. when minor dental procedures are prescribed 2 week courses of percocet, when ingrown toenails are prescribed a month on norco, when a simple, minor outpatient surgical procedure is prescribed oxycontin it is time for the law makers to step in and codify how booboo's should be treated. nobody wants to be in pain but face it, opiates are way over prescribed and they do little to alleviate long term pain. in the long run, treatment with narcotics does way more harm than good. patients will inevitably need ever increasing doses to keep the heebie jeebies away.
for you to be opposed to simple urine testing of opiate patients is ridiculous and says a lot about your true motives that you are less concerned with helping people and just want more and more doses of narcotics available. urine testing is one way the patient can prove to the provider that they are indeed taking the drugs themselves and not diverting them for illicit use. random periodic pill counts should also be required as well as addiction counselling. bottom line… if you want the drugs, you must be able to show that you are responsible enough. sorry, but i don't want to just take your word for it.
by the way, thanks for providing this forum.
Mr Sarraf, I agree some sort of long term monitoring is not out of line. We do it for anticoagulants, some antibiotics, some antiarrythmics, antiseizure meds.
Having worked in various inner city public hospitals over 40 years, I am well aware of the consequences of inappropriate self dosing and\or diversion of dangerous drugs.
My concerns about Zoeller reach beyond his opiophobia however. The big picture is his vision of control of women’s rights and homophobia.
I just found this forum. Congrats to Steve.
To end on a somewhat humorous note, with beware of blood and urine tests, an antedotal story: A coworker MSW/RN, middle aged lady, had been on low dose xanax, 0.5mg for years for anxiety.
Btw, her son is a pharmacist.
She got a new primary care doc, she had rx written and was taking it, once a day. The young PCP then had follow up labs done a month later. The labs came back that she was not taking meds. Canceled her rx.
HAHA, with due diligence, she found that the hospitals lab did not measure such low doses. They redid the test, recalibrated, and holy cow, yes, it showed up.
Be careful pharmacists, watch the lab values too.
Thanks Steve, great blog.
Hi Steve: Here in Michigan 3 decades ago, another self-defense activist faced similar paternalism from Republican Party heavyweights, who treated voters as their property. The Party hacks demanded to force “compromises” onto middle-class American voters, but would not adjust any of their own policies to help the voters out.
My activist friend, an ex-Army MP named Jon Coon, started a movement he called Brass Roots. The Brass Roots group took the view, that self-defense is a constitutional right. (Michigan’s new constitution of 1963 expressly says that self-defense is a right. This helped his position.). Jon’s group didn’t raise money. It simply put together a group of volunteers, who agreed to target one or more politicians per election, for removal from office, based on their anti-self-defense stances taken in office. The members agreed to raise money for any politician from any party, who ran against the incumbent they had targeted.
It took them two election cycles to get noticed. The first year they removed one prominent Republican legislator. Two years later they got several more. Republicans were so used to the idea that their voters were stupid enough to keep electing them, that they had no idea how to fight this. In the end, they had to admit that, as John Locke observed, “The law cannot restore life to my dead corpse.”. People would much rather be safe in their homes, than watch horrific punishments inflicted upon a criminal, whose undefended victims died horrifically. Therefore, self-defense is effective, where barbaric punishments are not.
Chronic pain patients are engaged in self-defense of a different sort. Our enemy is within our own bodies. Our defense is to stop a disease process from getting worse. But the same principles apply. We want to stay alive, right now. Spending oodles of money on pain research might help others in the future…and might help us, if we live long enough. But we cannot accept a vague promise to spend oodles of money on research, in exchange for giving up the meds that already work, because we have to survive while all that research is being done.
This sorry excuse for a jurist, clearly has no comprehension of those subjects, and is making zero effort to learn. He needs to be vote out, by any means necessary.
Thanks, Steve! That’s where I live and I will vote for my ShihTzu before I vote for Zoeller!!!
This is Great Steve , we just need to magnify it across the country and do pretty much a clean sweep of both the House and Senate . On both sides of the Isles I wish this would be on the front page of every newspaper in Indiana tomorrow morning …
I wish it could be too, David. I will make sure everyone I know is aware of his stance.