Feb 7, 2005. By: Andis Robeznieks AMNews

DEA seeks comments on pain med question Pain medicine experts seek balance in policies on prescribing controlled substances.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is preparing a document that will address its role as defined by the Controlled Substances Act. The DEA has invited physicians and others to submit comments on what they would like the document to address.

According to the announcement, published in the Jan. 18 Federal Register, those interested have until March 21 to submit comments.

The announcement was the latest in a series of notices about a frequently-asked-questions document on prescribing controlled substances for pain treatment that was posted on the DEA Web site in August 2004 and then withdrawn in October.

The document took more than two years to finish and was co-authored by the DEA, the University of Wisconsin Pain & Policy Studies Group and the Last Acts Partnership, with Russell K. Portenoy, MD, serving as the panel’s lead expert on pain treatment.

Dr. Portenoy, chair of the Dept. of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care at New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center and faculty member for the AMA online series on pain treatment, said he had little enthusiasm for going through the process again.

But PPSG Director David Joranson said it appeared that there were new people at the DEA working on prescription drug diversion, and they need to be educated on the issues. “I think everyone in the pain field — clinicians, administrators and patients — should take the DEA request very seriously,” he said.

http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/02/07/prse0207.htm