A Letter From Dr. Volkman in Prison

Dr. Volkmans letter is painfully simple. A great physician in prison asking for help. Let us do our best. Alen J. Salerian, M.D.

VOLKMAN PAUL H (19519424)

Friday, February 13, 2015 2:38 PM

Crowd source blurb

To: Alensalerian@gmail.com

PAIN PATIENTS: FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PAIN MEDICINE!

In 2002 Asa Hutchinson, then Director of the DEA, now (unfortunately) governor of Arkansas, was called to

Capitol Hill to explain why the DEA had not made a dent in the illegal drug market after over 30 years of

(seemingly) trying, and untold billions of tax dollars spent rounding up street corner drug dealers and recreational

drug users, and filling federal and state prisons with 2.3 million inmates, by far the largest prison population in the

world. Hutchinson realized that the DEA needed some high profile successes to get the congressmen off his

back, and so he conceived a new mission for the DEA. Instead of the DEA's traditional (and futile) targets of

heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and the international cartels which produced, supplied, and sold

the drugs, Hutchinson told his boys to turn their attention to prescription pain pills. The first order of business was

to create a bogus "epidemic of deadly 'hillbilly heroin' (Oxycontin) sweeping through Appalachia like a plague,

causing over 900 deaths in 3 years," and stoke public hysteria through sensationalized, false reports in tabloid

media. (An independent study of the 913 "Oxycontin-related deaths" found 12 "possibly verifiable" cases.) The

next step of Hutchinson's plan was to blame doctors for pain pills on the street, by grand proclamations that

doctors routinely "overprescribed" pain pills that their "customers" would then resell. Indeed, there were some

unscrupulous doctors who "utilized their prescription-writing powers as a means to engage in illicit drug dealing

and trafficking as conventionally understood, primarily for the profits to be gained therefrom." (Supreme Court, in

MOORE, 1975, and GONZALES V OREGON, 2006) But every profession and occupation has a few bad actors

who sully the reputations of the honest 99%. The DEA was well aware that over 95% of the prescription drugs for

sale on the street had nothing to do with doctors acting like drug dealers, but had come from employee and

organized crime theft from drug manufacturers, warehouses, highway trucks, and pharmacies. Over 1800

robberies of pharmacies were reported in one 3 year period.

But for Hutchinson, the doctors were easy, reliable targets: all had offices with their names on the doors, listed in

the Yellow Pages; all kept careful records and receipts and charts, and sent triplicate forms to the DEA every time

they wrote a prescription for pain pills. Best of all, most doctors had money and assets which could simply be

seized, whether or not charges were ever filed against them. By cynically and falsely describing all chronic pain

patients as drug addicts, the DEA magically turned all doctors who prescribed pain medication for their patients

into drug dealers, and their patients became "customers".

In 2010, The Institute of Medicine, which advises the government on health care issues, estimated that there

were 116 million Americans who suffered severe pain each and every day, and who had legitimate need for

strong, narcotic pain medicine. The IOM distinguished this legion of pain patients from about 8 million hardcore

drug addicts. As a result of Hutchinson's War on Pain Doctors (and Pain Patients!), few physicians are foolhardy

enough to risk going to jail for prescribing pain medicine. Prof. Ronald T. Libby estimated in 2005 that there were

only about 3000 doctors nationwide who would prescribe pain medication (probably far fewer by now), or

potentially 30,000 pain patients for every pain doctor. Such doctors attract desperate patients from hundreds of

miles away, their parking lots filled with out-of-state tags, their waiting rooms crowded. Such doctors are quickly

and easily labeled "pill mill" doctors and are shut down and dragged off to jail, one after another. The DEA has

thus made it almost impossible for legitimate pain patients, almost one third of American citizens, to legally obtain

the medication they have an 8th Amendment right to have. The DEA thus forces 116 million citizens to do without

pain medicine.

Or to buy pain pills on the street. Pain medication obtained through a legitimate prescription at a pharmacy would

cost about $250 per month, but over $3000 bought on the street. This indicates that the black market in

prescription pain pills is worth over $1 TRILLION per year!! To maintain and protect this gigantic Golden Goose,

the DEA is perfectly willing to throw innocent pain doctors into jail for the rest of their lives, while extorting

enormous sums from pain patients whom they have stigmatized and demonized as drug addicts. The illicit

proceeds have permeated and corrupted every level of federal and state government, from beat cops and narcs

to the very top.

Dr. Paul Volkman practiced pain management in southern Ohio. In 2011 he was convicted of 22 felony violations

of the Controlled Substances Act, including the deaths of four of his patients who had died of heart disease,

Alen Salerian

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Alen Salerian

Dr. Paul Volkman practiced pain management in southern Ohio. In 2011 he was convicted of 22 felony violations

of the Controlled Substances Act, including the deaths of four of his patients who had died of heart disease,

cancer, and black lung disease (NOT overdoses!). Dr. Volkman's trial was a shocking parody, akin to a Stalinist

political show trial. Prosecutor Oakley had obtained the indictment by threatening a dozen former patients with

jail if they did not agree to lie to the Grand Jury as well as at the trial. After Dr. Volkman's court-appointed

attorney had challenged the search warrant for his office, obtained through a falsified and distorted DEA

description of a recorded doctor visit of a CI, the CI mysteriously died six weeks later. Dr. Volkman's former

attorney Kevin Byers, his government-gadfly girlfriend Siobhan Reynolds (who ran the Pain Relief Network), and

Kevin's mother were killed in a "crash" of his private plane on Christmas eve, 2011. Two days before Dr.

Volkman's reprehensible case went to the jury, Oakley's boss, Obama clone U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart, called

Washington for a little help, just to make sure. Obama responded with a nationally televised speech on April 19,

2011 about the dangers and evils of black market prescription pain pills. The next day, Obama's "Drug Czar" Gil

Kerlikowske showed up in Cincinnati to repeat the same speech one block from the courthouse, adding that

prescription pain pills posed a greater danger to society than heroin, cocaine, and alcohol combined. (See The

Charleston Daily Mail, April 20, 2011) The speech was covered by local media, which added footage of elders in

wheelchairs selling pain pills in front of their nursing homes.

Dr. Volkman had presented at trial a Cincinnati pain doctor, a member of the American Academy of Pain

Medicine, who testified that Dr. Volkman had practiced in strict compliance with Ohio law, and that all of his

prescriptions were for a "legitimate medical purpose", the treatment of pain, and thus did not violate the CSA. Dr.

Volkman was sentenced to four CONSECUTIVE life sentences without parole, PLUS 5 years for a gun owned by

the clinic operator, kept in a safe to which he had no access, and which was never "used in furtherance of a drug

trafficking offense." His bizarre, draconian convictions and historic sentences were summarily affirmed by the 6th

Circuit panel, who were not about to overrule Sandra S. Beckwith, who had been Chief District Judge for 10

years, and whose chambers were just down the same hallway of the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse.

However, in an unexpected turn of events, Dr. Volkman's case did not pass the "smell test" at the Supreme Court,

which sent it back to the 6th Circuit for a redo. Dr. Volkman will soon have a resentencing hearing, at which he

will have an excellent chance to completely overturn his horrific, unjust convictions.

Dr. Volkman's case presents a rare and amazing opportunity to stop the War on Pain Doctors in its tracks and to

expose its real nature and purpose: the vicious, corrupt attacks on honest, conscientious and caring doctors who

try to alleviate the pain of their suffering patients, all to preserve the DEA's abusive, criminal monopoly on the

supply and distribution of pain medicine.

Dr. Volkman needs your help to obtain funds to pay for his defense in front of the same hateful, vindictive judge

who sentenced him to 300 years in jail. Your help to Dr. Volkman and other doctors in the same plight will be a

huge first step to end the DEA's reign of terror over 600,000 doctors and their patients, the American People.

Your assistance to Dr. Volkman will help to restore your 8th Amendment constitutional right to pain relief and help

to restore the Bill of Rights and the Rule of Law in America.