FDA, DEA Too Slow to Act

[DreamSmoker]

The federal government is a mishmash of belated contradictions when it comes to the regulation of medicine. Its various stances aren't helping prevent drug abuse or overdoses, and they aren't helping ease patients' pain.

In April, White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske unhelpfully suggested Congress require special training for doctors before they can prescribe powerful pain-fighting medication such as OxyContin.

People at the forefront of addiction are aware that the rising culprit at the center of overdose deaths, abuse and crime these days is hydrocodone, since oxycodone is more difficult to get.

That's why addiction experts and doctors have urged the Food and Drug Administration since the early 1990s to make hydrocodone a Schedule II drug ( like oxycodone ), which are much more strictly controlled than Schedule III drugs. Doctors say hydrocodone's potency was misunderstood, and it was a terrible mistake to list it as Schedule III , the Associated Press reported.

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/international-cannabis-news/151479-fda-dea-too-slow-act.html

If the federal government based decisions on science, hydrocodone would be a Schedule II drug, and marijuana would be Schedule III, or less. And doctors would be allowed to decide, without fear of lawsuits or criminal charges, what best to prescribe to their patients.