editorial comment As usual, some words of wisdom from our friends at Cato....

"The White House Wednesday will announce a national anti-drug strategy that includes prodding more states to set up databases that can track people who get multiple prescriptions of frequently abused prescription drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin," reports USA Today. "The strategy, to be announced in Denver today by White House drug czar John Walters, does not include any new programs, a reflection of how the tight federal budget is limiting anti-drug initiatives."

In the Cato Policy Analysis "Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The DEA's War on Prescription Painkillers," Ronald T. Libby, a professor at the University of North Florida, argues that over the past few years, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been aggressively targeting doctors who prescribe pain medication such as OxyContin to their patients, and as a result, the agency has ruined the lives and careers of many physicians, and has made it more difficult for people in pain to get treatment. Libby claims that the government's aggressive pursuit of pain doctors has led to well-meaning physicians being labeled as drug dealers.

Radley Balko, a Cato policy analyst, writes in "Restricting Cold Medicine Won't Curb Meth Use" that the government's war on drugs is "misdirected, ineffective and likely to create more problems than it solves." According to Balko, "despite 30 years and many billions of dollars spent on the Drug War, America's appetite for illicit drugs really hasn't subsided. It merely shifts, as the same drugs (or incarnations of them) come in and out of vogue. Inevitably, reaction from media, politicians and regulators to a particular drug's fashionability is overblown and does little to diminish actual abuse. Instead, efforts to thwart drug use often result in costly, needless hassling of law-abiding people that chip away at civil liberties."

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