Interesting story from the Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson:

Heightened efforts by the Drug Enforcement Administration to crack down on narcotics abuse are producing a troubling side effect by denying some hospice and elderly patients needed pain medication, according to two Senate Democrats and a coalition of pharmacists and geriatric experts.

Tougher enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act, which tightly restricts the distribution of pain medicines such as morphine and Percocet, is causing pharmacies to balk and is leading to delays in pain relief for those patients and seniors in long-term-care facilities, wrote  Sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

You’d think from coverage of the Justice Dept. not cracking down on medical marijuana in states where its legal that the federal government no longer has an impractically “tough” drug enforcement policy. However, DEA is evidently still prioritizing zealous enforcement over the patient’s drug treatment.

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