This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 20, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In managing pain using opioids, dosages can get very high very quickly.

But the DEA's mission isn't to help doctors

effectively treat patients, it's to enforce drug laws. Pain treatment

specialist William Hurwitz found himself the subject of DEA inquiries when he tried to both obey the law and treat his patients effectively.

He detailed his experience at the Cato Institute yesterday.

The first trial which concluded in I think 2004 I was sentenced 25 years in

prison. And during the sentencing hearing one has an opportunity to have one's friends and

supporters give little talks to the judge in hopes of softening their response I

felt as if it was a eulogy at my own funeral.

I thought that I'd give you some background.

My case really occurred in the context

of changing attitudes toward pain management and opioids and a reaction by the

federal regulatory authorities and now by the various boards of medicine to what

has been perceived as an epidemic of drug abuse diversion.

But when I got out of medical school in 1971, I was a Peace Corps doctor for a couple of years in Brazil until 75. I finished my

residency a couple of years later and I opened in practice in Adams Morgan and

in the Palisades part of DC.

And over the next 10 or 11 years until 1991,

I had a very pleasant life.

I was married.

...