THE DEA IS BUSTING DOCTORS FOR PRESCRIBING DRUGS-AND PATIENTS ARE DYING IN PAIN
DONALD DEWBERRY, 44, a retired aircraft mechanic, went to Dr. John McFadden several years ago after two failed surgeries for degenerative disk disease. The pain in his neck was crippling, and even moving his eyes triggered it. Dr. McFadden, who is medical director of the Tupelo Pain Clinic in Tupelo, Mississippi, prescribed Dewberry narcotic painkillers known as opioids, which are highly effective and rarely addictive when taken to relieve pain.
Unfortunately for McFadden, he was under surveillance. Federal and state narcotics investigators first went to his red-brick clinic in 1987 on a tip from the Mississippi State Board of Pharmacy that he was overprescribing painkillers. They sifted through his inventory logs for evidence that narcotic medications had been diverted to the street for black-market resale. McFadden claims that only minor record-keeping errors were found. Yet because McFadden specialized in pain treatment (and therefore had prescribed narcotics such as Vicodin and Tylenol #3), he was subject to continuing suspicion. Over the next nine years, agents from the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure periodically investigated his prescribing habits.
A new front had been opened in the drug war, and patients in pain were potential enemies. Even though McFadden, the only pain specialist in northern Mississippi, administered legal medications of great benefit, his prescribing of narcotics targeted him as a suspect.
In March 1996 a state medical board investigator arrived at his clinic with a search warrant. "We had been expecting him. We knew he had to do his job, so we were friendly and said, 'You can look at anything you want,"' McFadden recalls. The agent seized the medical charts of 36 patients. Several months later McFadden was notified that the medical board had charged him with 11 counts of violating the Mississippi Medical Practice Act, including unprofessional conduct "likely to harm the public."
After two days of administrative hearings and 30 minutes of deliberation, the medical board - whose members are appointed by the governor - suspended McFadden's medical license and prohibited him from prescribing a variety of controlled substances on an outpatient basis. McFadden's censure has had a chilling effect in Mississippi medical circles. To avoid similar repercussions or scrutiny, other area doctors have virtually stopped prescribing narcotics. One doctor in Tupelo posted a notice in his waiting room: DO NOT ASK ME TO REFILL PAIN MEDICATIONS. In a doctor's office 40 miles away in Corinth, a sign read DON'T ASK FOR OPIOIDS.
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