Free Republic

Xiulu Ruan, a board-certified Alabama pain specialist, was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison for prescribing opioid analgesics "outside the usual course of professional medical practice." According to the appeals court that upheld his conviction, it did not matter whether he sincerely believed he was doing what a physician is supposed to do. That ruling, which is the focus of a case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday, conflates negligence with criminal liability, invites the Drug Enforcement Administration to usurp state medical regulators and encourages prosecutions that have a chilling effect on pain treatment. If it is allowed to...

I have no idea who said it, it’s been attributed to a lot of people, but I love the saying, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” It’s funny because it’s true. It’s important for the same reason. Throughout my career in policy and politics I have been lucky to work and become friends with some really smart people (make no mistake, there were a lot of dumb ones too). As they have moved on to other jobs, they still write some brilliant columns that do what all good columns do: make you think.One...

No matter how you slice it, the opioid epidemic is poison. Literally, in the wrong hands, the drugs themselves are poison. The rash of broken homes and deaths caused by their over-prescription is social poison. The after-effects of the epidemic were so severe that they handed Democrats the House when Republicans fumbled the ball, which, for the party in power, made them political poison. And yet, somehow, not only are pharmaceutical companies making more of this poison, but the FDA is rolling over in the face of Pharma pressure and letting them come to market, sometimes without adequate safety review. In...

President Trump's declaration that opioid abuse is a public health emergency is sparking debate about addiction. Tragically, myths and misinformation are blocking the path to preventing more deaths. Start with the causes of the opioid crisis. On "Face the Nation," New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, chair of Trump's opioid commission, blamed overprescribing doctors. "This crisis started not on a street corner somewhere. This crisis started in the doctor's offices and hospitals of America." That's untrue, Governor. It contradicts scientific evidence and lets drug abusers off the hook. At least three-quarters of opioid pill abusers and almost all heroin addicts got...

One painful aspect of the public debates over the opioid-addiction crisis is how much they mirror the arguments that arise from personal addiction crises. If you've ever had a loved one struggle with drugs -- in my case, my late brother, Josh -- the national exercise in guilt-driven blame-shifting and finger-pointing, combined with flights of sanctimony and ideological righteousness, has a familiar echo. The difference between the public arguing and the personal agonizing is that, at the national level, we can afford our abstractions. When you have skin in the game, none of the easy answers seem all that easy....