Author Topic: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control  (Read 1497 times)

roo_ster

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Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« on: September 10, 2009, 11:24:05 AM »
Essentially, it is a case of the Federales being upset with a third-party private citizen for speaking with the media and trying to fight the Federale spin on their drug cases against medical doctors who prescribe painkillers for those in chronic pain.

They are upset lawyers with gov't and LEOs on their side.  So, how do they respond?  By going after the private citizen with the club of law.

There is a special place in Hell for people like Tanya Treadway.



http://reason.com/news/show/135935.html

Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
A federal prosecutor tries to silence a pain treatment activist.

Jacob Sullum | September 9, 2009

When the government accuses a doctor of running a "pill mill," prosecutors portray every aspect of his practice in a sinister light. Prescribing painkillers becomes drug trafficking, applying for insurance reimbursement becomes fraud, making bank deposits becomes money laundering, and working with people at the office becomes conspiracy.

When Siobhan Reynolds thinks a doctor has been unfairly targeted for such a prosecution, she tries to counter the official narrative by highlighting the patients he has helped and dramatizing the conflict between drug control and pain control. But now the government has turned its reinterpretive powers on Reynolds, portraying the pain treatment activist's advocacy as obstruction of justice and thereby threatening the freedom of anyone who dares to suggest there is more than one side to a criminal case.

In December 2007, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wichita unveiled a 34-count indictment against Haysville, Kansas, physician Stephen Schneider and his wife, Linda, a nurse who worked in his clinic. It charged Schneider with "illegally distributing prescription drugs to his patients, directly causing the deaths of at least four of them."

Convinced the Schneiders were innocent, Reynolds and her group, the Pain Relief Network (PRN), publicly disputed the charges. In January 2008, PRN announced a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of using the federal Controlled Substances Act to regulate the practice of medicine, traditionally a state function. PRN also tried to stop the state medical board from suspending Schneider's license, arguing that doing so would harm his patients.

Although neither of those efforts succeeded in a court of law, they began to have an impact in the court of public opinion. Press coverage of the case went beyond perfunctory quotes from defense attorneys to include the perspectives of chronic pain patients who were grateful to Schneider for making their lives livable and anxious about their prospects of obtaining adequate treatment from doctors wary of legal trouble.

"He fought for me, and it is time now that I fight for him," a woman suffering from spinal deterioration told the Associated Press. "He doesn't deserve this. This is like a nightmare for me." Hundreds of patients signed a petition supporting Schneider, an effort launched under a hand-lettered sign reading "Don't Tread on Me Tanya."

The Tanya in question, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway, evidently was annoyed by the unusually balanced press coverage Reynolds helped arrange. In April 2008, Treadway took the extraordinary step of seeking a court order prohibiting Reynolds, who was neither a defendant nor a lawyer in the Schneiders' case, from talking about it. The prosecutor claimed Reynolds had "a sycophantic or parasitic relationship with the defendants," whom she was using "to further her own personal interests."         

Nine months after a federal judge rejected Treadway's attempt to gag Reynolds, the activist learned she was the subject of a grand jury investigation into possible obstruction of justice. Reynolds and PRN received subpoenas demanding their communications with dozens of people, including relatives of the Schneiders and members of their defense team. Tellingly, the material sought includes correspondence related to a PRN-commissioned billboard in Wichita proclaiming "Dr. Schneider never killed anyone."

Scott Michelman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Reynolds, says the interest in the billboard "confirms that this so-called investigation is about Siobhan Reynolds' speech....The most plausible explanation here is that the prosecutor is trying to shut Siobhan up."

Last week a federal judge rejected Reynolds' motion to quash the subpoenas on First Amendment grounds and imposed $200-a-day fines on her and PRN for refusing to comply. Reynolds plans to appeal. "This is a direct attempt to intimidate me and silence me," she told A.P.

Another item sought by the grand jury is a PRN documentary that discusses how the war on drugs affects pain treatment, a video Michelman calls "completely innocuous from a criminal perspective" and "absolutely protected speech." Its title, especially apt in light of Treadway's vindictive campaign against Reynolds, is The Chilling Effect.
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roo_ster

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Strings

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2009, 02:59:09 PM »
Not to sound cold but...

This is surprising, how?
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RevDisk

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2009, 04:58:25 PM »
Essentially, it is a case of the Federales being upset with a third-party private citizen for speaking with the media and trying to fight the Federale spin on their drug cases against medical doctors who prescribe painkillers for those in chronic pain.

They are upset lawyers with gov't and LEOs on their side.  So, how do they respond?  By going after the private citizen with the club of law.

That's how it normally goes.  Don't get me wrong, I hope the private citizen in question wins and sues for the travesty of justice.  But I wouldn't be surprised if the private citizen was thrown in jail, fined and snowflaked for daring to annoy an assistant US attorney.  Using questionable means to achieve questionable ends isn't exactly uncommon in the WOD.

Props to the ACLU. 
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Nitrogen

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #3 on: September 10, 2009, 05:26:13 PM »
Wow.  I thought I was in Soviet Russia for a second.

and yes, Props to the ACLU.  This is precisely why i put up with their anti gun nonsense.
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MicroBalrog

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2009, 08:14:09 PM »
Due to a medical error in my younger years, I suffer from recurring chronic pain (which is so far not so frequent or horrible as to require anything more than OTC painkillers, but which the doctor tells me will get worse with the years). A friend of my family suffered from a very similar issue and she got so bad that moving out of the house was a serious issue.

As such, I may require real painkillers in the future. Let's say I'm not enthusiastic about restricting my access to them.
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lee n. field

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2009, 10:21:30 PM »
Quote
Let's say I'm not enthusiastic about restricting my access to them.

Then you probably don't want to move to the United State.  Our rulers (and much of the people) are touched in the head on the issue.  "Drugs!"
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MicroBalrog

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #6 on: September 10, 2009, 10:34:17 PM »
Then you probably don't want to move to the United State.  Our rulers (and much of the people) are touched in the head on the issue.  "Drugs!"

Yes. But the Drug War has long gone global.

[Although khat is legal in Israel, for what little it's worth. In any other respect, our enforcement tactics are far more insane than yours.]
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

PTK

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #7 on: September 10, 2009, 11:01:17 PM »
Things like this make my blood boil. If it weren't for my pain clinic, I'd be confined to my bed most every hour of every day, only being able to walk briefly with the use of a cane.  :|
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Seenterman

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #8 on: September 11, 2009, 04:10:01 PM »
Everyday this country slides more and more towards Orwell's 1984. Shut up and submit should be the new motto of our friendly justice system.

roo_ster

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #9 on: September 11, 2009, 04:42:49 PM »
Everyday this country slides more and more towards Orwell's 1984. Shut up and submit should be the new motto of our friendly justice system.

It is the new motto...or at least the advice most everyone gives for most any encounter with LEOs.  Right/wrong, doesn't matter: "Shut up & submit."
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roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
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lupinus

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #10 on: September 11, 2009, 05:32:46 PM »
the painkillers need to be controlled BS burns my buttons as it is.  My mother is disabled, she needs them not because she's addicted or gets high off them, but because she has more bones in her body than science tells us should be in a homo sapien.  Some of which are/were in funny places.  So yes, she needs her damn pain meds.

However, any time she has to change doctors she has to fight for them.  At the very least going through months of useless pain management she's done before only to reach the same result.  Switch doctors one time to many because they won't give you the meds you know you need?  You get branded as shopping doctors for the meds the gubment says you don't.

Infringing on someone's right to free speech for disagreeing with you on the BS adds even more fuel to the fire.
That is all. *expletive deleted*ck you all, eat *expletive deleted*it, and die in a fire. I have considered writing here a long parting section dedicated to each poster, but I have decided, at length, against it. *expletive deleted*ck you all and Hail Satan.

RevDisk

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #11 on: September 11, 2009, 06:17:50 PM »
Infringing on someone's right to free speech for disagreeing with you on the BS adds even more fuel to the fire.

Actually, drugs are exempted from pretty much every aspect of freedom.  Everything from Posse Commitas to Fourth Amendment to now the First.  If it involves drugs, you pretty much have no rights under the law whatsoever.
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lupinus

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Re: Drug Control Becomes Speech Control
« Reply #12 on: September 11, 2009, 07:22:37 PM »
I know, as stated just fuel to the fire  :mad:
That is all. *expletive deleted*ck you all, eat *expletive deleted*it, and die in a fire. I have considered writing here a long parting section dedicated to each poster, but I have decided, at length, against it. *expletive deleted*ck you all and Hail Satan.