"Excerpts from Cato Institute analysis *: "the government is waging an aggressive, intemperate, unjustified war on pain doctors.".

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"By demonizing physicians as drug dealers and exaggerating the health risk of pain management, the federal government has made physicians scapegoats for the failed drug war. Even worse, the Drug Enforcement Administration's renewed war on pain doctors has frightened many physicians out of pain management altogether, exacerbating an already serious health crisis--the widespread undertreatment of intractable pain."

"Experts agree that tens of millions of Americans suffer from undertreated or untreated pain ... According to one 1999 survey, just one in four pain patients received treatment adequate to alleviate suffering."

"The medical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that when administered properly, opioid therapy rarely, if ever, results in 'accidental addiction' or opioid abuse."

"Pain specialists make an important distinction between patients who depend on opiates to function normally--to get out of bed, tend to household chores, and hold down jobs--and addicts who take drugs for euphoria, and whose lifestyles deteriorate as a result of taking opiates, instead of improving. The DEA makes no such distinction."

"The relationship between a doctor and his patient is crucial to the proper assessment and treatment of the patient's...