By Carol Levy, PNN Columnist

Terrorism is very much in the news these days, given the Israeli-Hamas war and all the fallout from it around the world. But terrorism can also hit close to home and in unexpected ways.

The FBI defines domestic terrorism this way:

“Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”

It may not be domestic violence in the literal meaning of the term, but I would posit the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is a domestic terrorist organization.

Why would I believe that? The answer lies in how terrorists work. Their goals and methods are simple: kill one person and scare thousands. In the DEA's case, it means arrest a doctor and allege that they overprescribe opioids without a legitimate medical reason. This has a chilling effect on thousands of other physicians, who then limit or even refuse to prescribe opioids.

If a doctor knows his patients well and has been prescribing opioids safely to them for years, with beneficial results, makes no difference. The doctor is essentially arrested on ideological, social and political grounds, which gives validation to the concept that they are being terrorized.

The DEA’s war on drugs has gone far beyond its original goal of going after street drugs and drug dealers. It has escalated into a war against prescription opioids and the doctors who prescribe them, essentially making patients hostages to the DEA's political persecution.

I know there are instances when the arrests are legitimate, but from what I can tell many of the doctors caught in the DEA snare have been unfairly targeted.

I have never been a victim of their terrorism. I did lose one of the best doctors I ever had when he lost his privileges to write scripts for opioids. Although this was not due to the DEA but his own inappropriate actions, it allows me to better understand the effect that DEA terrorism has on so many of us.

My experience is nothing compared to the stories of patients who can no longer work, play with their kids, or even get out of bed because the opioids that allowed them to do these things were tapered or discontinued. Or they can’t get their opioid prescriptions filled at a pharmacy.

It’s nothing compared to all the stories of patients killing themselves because they can no longer get the medication that was helping them. Or the patients who were abandoned by a doctor who fears the DEA, who then struggle to find another doctor with the courage to risk going to jail by prescribing opioids.

To the DEA, the fact that these medications are working and that doctors are legitimately prescribing them is irrelevant. Fear seems to be their primary goal. Is that not terrorism?

Until the DEA and politicians get out of the exam room, I fear that pain patients will remain their hostages.

Carol Jay Levy has lived with trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic facial pain disorder, for over 30 years. She is the author of “A Pained Life, A Chronic Pain Journey.”  Carol is the moderator of the Facebook support group “Women in Pain Awareness.” Her blog “The Pained Life” can be found here.