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 "right to be free from pain...is inseparable from their right to refuse medical treatment" (Meisel & Cerminara , 2001) , and have granted immunity to healthcare providers who treat pain with strong doses of analgesic medications that inadvertently end the patient's life (McKay V. Bergstedt,1990) , Morever , several states have enacted intractable pain statutes to encourage those who treat patients who are terminally ill and have intractable pain to manage the pain without threat of legal liabinty if the treatment results in the patient's death