Through the federal intractable pain regulation , the federal government in 1974 clarified the federal law that prohibits physicians from prescribing opioid to detoxify or maintain an opioid addiction. The regulation stated , in part, limitation on a physician...to administer or dispense narcotic drugs to persons with intractable pain in which no relief or cure is possible or none has been found after reasonable effort "(Institute of medicine {IOM},1997) . similarly , some courts explicitly recognize that a patients