After this “dust-up” with FB over me using this graphic… this graphic made me think about somethings with this saying and the DEA. The controlled substance act was signed into law in 1970 creating the BNDD ( Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs) which morphed in the DEA in 1973.
Currently with many new, updated studies and information about opiate/controlled substances that was not available back in 1970 , pts are asking… why won’t they listen to these new studies that shows that opiates and controlled substances are not as addicting – or virtually non addicting when prescribed to chronic pain pts and they are taken as prescribed.
Here is all the DEA schedules definitions https://www.dea.gov/drug-scheduling These definition were basically decided up by the BNDD/DEA back 50 yrs ago. If you notice, there is very small differences between adjacent categories – with the exception of C-I.. which basically for illegal drugs.
And medications back then were arbitrarily assigned to one of each of 6 categories.
They continue to juggle meds around in the scheduled meds list… Some times, it is just the DEA changing “their opinion”… from the beginning of the controlled substances Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen (Norco) was a C-III but in late 2014 the DEA decided that it should be a C-II… because their opinion is that people were becoming addicted to this med and/or abusing it.
When the non-opiate/ non-addicting meds came to market – Stadol & Talwin they were just Rx only items, but it didn’t take long for the DEA to classified as a controlled substance because substance abusers were using these two meds to potentiate other substances that they were taking.
When Lyrica came the market.. it was originally scheduled as a C-V because a few of people stated that it made them “high”… so you have med that was suppose to be a non-opiate pain med, but when just a few people in the clinical study stating that it made them high – it got scheduled
There have been other meds that end up being abused by some people and changed to a scheduled med
The scheduling seems to be more determined by the use/abuse by a certain small group of people and has nothing to do with the actual medicinal properties of the medication.
Makes one wonder, when the typical OD toxicology has 4 to 7 substances showing up .. with one of those typically being ALCOHOL, but the use/abuse of alcohol continues to kill abt 100,000/yr but alcohol has a very healthy tax income stream to both state & federal coffers.
This also seem to be the same logic behind the DEA’s “medical fact(s)” that there is no valid medical necessity for a pt being prescribed a opiate, benzo, muscle relaxant concurrently because the DEA has observed that substance abusers/OD’s have been observed taking those three categories of meds together in very large doses – much above what is FDA recommended doses – to get high.
The DEA has turned these opinions – that were derived at by observing what substance abuser/addicts have done and they have stated and repeated these opinions for so many decades that those opinions have been repeated so many times over 5 decades that they are now believed to be actual FACTS.
How many people who were working for the DEA in the 70’s are still working for the DEA now ? Who could have refuted that these “facts” are really guesses/opinion from those working the DEA in the 1970’s ?
Filed under: General Problems
According to the DEA Schedules you linked to, peyote has a “high potential for abuse” while soma, xanax and valium have a “low potential for abuse and dependence.”
That must explain why we find so many peyote pushers, peyote addicts, and peyote rehab centers, right?
PS. Quaaludes were legal, and one of the most highly-prescribed sedative-hypnotics for nearly two decades before the DEA moved them to Schedule 1 in 1984. While methaqualone inarguably has a high potential for abuse, the assertion it has “no currently acceptable medical use” is self-serving, since it patently once did.
The DEA should be ABOLISHED !! They let the cartels peddle there drugs in through the border.I will bet there are more than a handful of politicians getting a “cut” from protecting the cartels Instead the DEA goes after the few doctors left that care about there patients and write scripts for pain. That is the main goal of the DEA…Beside the fact with help from the thieving politicians the DEA can now own all properties of a Dr if they raid his practice..And share that among themselves!! Quite an incentive for crooked DEA agents
They had to reschedule it due to all the suicides that this drug caused