Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Asa Hutchinson made an unusual appearance at the National Press Club on October 23 to call for a balanced policy on prescription pain medications such as oxycodone(Drug information on oxycodone) (OxyContin and various other products).
Hutchinson appeared at a press conference organized by Last Acts, a national campaign to improve care near the end of life, to release a joint statement with 21 leading health organizations, including the American Cancer Society and the American Alliance of Cancer Pain Initiatives. Reports of abuse of the pain medication oxycodone have received wide attention in the local and national media recently, and the DEA has made over 100 related arrests. Hutchinson was trying to relay the message that although the DEA will continue its efforts to prevent abuse and illegal diversion of the drug, they don’t want to restrict physicians from prescribing these medications when appropriate.
"We want doctors to understand that they have legitimate responsibility in treating pain, and we respect that," said Hutchinson. "They have to use their good judgment."
Russell Portenoy, MD, chairman of the department of pain medicine and palliative care at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, said he hoped the event would help physicians view the DEA with more understanding and less fear. He related that a chairman of another department at his hospital peremptorily sent an e-mail around telling the institution that he was no longer going to permit his house staff to prescribe oxycodone because "it was too hot."
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