the war on doctors

John Tierney has an excellent column today, "Handcuffs and Stethoscopes". This paragraph sums it up nicely:

If enough doctors are jailed or scared into not writing prescriptions, it's conceivable that this drug war could have more impact than the ones against heroin and cocaine - doctors, after all, are harder to replace than crack dealers. But even if there's less OxyContin on the street, is that worth the suffering of patients who can't get the painkillers they need?

Exactly! And guess what? Unintended consequences follow:

"Because diverted OxyContin is more expensive and difficult to purchase," the agency reported, "users have switched to heroin."

This is one of those issues that really makes me angry and it's great to see it get a sympathetic treatment in a major newspaper like this.