Apr 28, 2004 Author Unknown Drugpolicy.org

Pain patient Richard Paey, a 45-year-old father of three, was sentenced by a Florida court last week to a mandatory minimum 25-year sentence and fined $500,000 for drug trafficking. Paey’s crime? He possessed more pain medicine than allowed by the state.

According to the Pain Relief Network (PRN), which supported Paey through sentencing and will see him through his appeal, Judge David Diskey listened to Paey plead for mercy, but could not exercise judicial discretion because of state mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. “This is [a] problem for the Florida state legislature and the governor,” Judge Diskey said.

Paey, severely injured and in chronic pain from a 1985 auto accident and later back surgery, also suffers from multiple sclerosis. The 25-year minimum sentence means that the wheelchair-bound Paey will likely die in prison for his purported crime.

“Richard Paey is a seriously ill man who is entitled to his legal medications,” says Siobhan Reynolds, founding executive director of PRN and a family member of a chronic pain patient. “Through the grandstanding of legislators, eager to appear tough on drugs, law enforcement has managed to so thoroughly encroach on medical practice that the obscenity of the situation, as illustrated by Richard Paey’s case, is unmistakable. As it stands, patients in pain and the doctors who treat them are low-hanging fruit for self-righteous prosecutors. That our society has allowed such an ongoing outrage to continue while flat ignoring the scourge of undertreated pain is appalling.” http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/04_28_04paey.cfm