A leading pain-medication expert says the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is failing to strike a proper balance between preventing illicit diversion of pain drugs and ensuring that patients get the medicine they need, Medical News Today reported March 21.

"It is now apparent to me that the spirit of cooperation that existed between the DEA and the pain community to achieve the goal of balance has broken down," said Howard A. Heit, M.D., a pain doctor who previously had collaborated with the agency in an aborted effort to provide guidance to physicians on prescribing pain medication. "The DEA seems to have ignored the input and needs of the healthcare professionals and pain patients who actually prescribe, dispense and use controlled substances."

Heit wrote one of seven commentaries on the subject in the February 2006 issue of the journal Pain Medicine, published by the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM).

Doctors charge that the DEA has used the courts to bypass state medical boards and go after doctors who prescribe pain medications. AAPM President Scott M. Fishman, M.D. worries that a recently passed law requiring states to track prescriptions of controlled substances "may be intended less as a clinical tool than as a physician mouse trap."

"Healthcare decisions, including those involving legitimate use of analgesics, must remain in the hands of healthcare professionals," wrote Fishman.

"The DEA should be required to work with health agencies and healthcare professionals in finding common ground and reaching the rational position of balance that is in the public's best interest, Healthcare oversight must remain within agencies whose primary responsibility is to improve public health. Contrary to recent events in Washington, we must continue to insist that drug abuse can be curbed without undermining patients in pain and striving for such policies is in the best interest of society. The least we can do is to make sure that the casualties of the war on drugs are not suffering patients who legitimately deserve relief."