Chiropractors are trying to rebrand themselves as primary care physicians...they are seeking the expansion of their scope of practice, via the magic of legislative alchemy, to include the prescription and administration of drugs.  Not drugs that any self-respecting M.D. would use, but drugs nonetheless.  That effort succeeded to an extent in New Mexico.  Recently Colorado got into the act.  Other states have followed suit.  One of the main obstacles in their way is the lack of authority to prescribe drugs.  Colorado chiropractors recently attempted an end run around the time-consuming and expensive process of lobbying the state legislature and getting their practice act amended to include prescription privileges.  Perhaps they were aware of certain snafus (which we'll get to soon) bedeviling New Mexico chiropractors in their quest for practice expansion.  The Colorado Board of Chiropractic Examiners' solution was to bypass the legislature altogether by simply passing a rule giving chiropractors the authority to administer and prescribe certain drugs.  Never mind the fact that this was totally beyond the authority the Colorado Legislature gave the Board...Meanwhile, in New Mexico, the battle over chiropractic prescribing continues.  As reported in a previous post, the legislature amended the chiropractic practice act to create a new iteration of chiropractor, an "advanced practice" version, which takes all of 90 hours of additional training plus passing a test.  The New Mexico Chiropractic Association describes part of this training on its website [capitalization and punctuation as in original]: Routes of administration [for 'naturally derived' substances], of course, are oral, topical and rectal, which we may already do but new to us here are intravenous (IV) and intramuscular (IM) administration. Doctors completing the certification will be prepared to do: IM injections (B12, homeopathic, magnesium, trigger point, etc.), neural therapy injections Intravenous procedures (meyer's cocktails, H2O2, chelation, ascorbates, amino acids, minerals, etc.), emergency procedures Laboratory testing and diagnosis. In other words, a veritable pantry full of quack remedies, now conveniently available via an IV...The Arizona Association of Chiropractic has filed an application with the state legislature for an expansion of chiropractic scope of practice to include the use of natural substances, homeopathic medication and orthomolecular therapy as an opportunity to enhance care for their patients.  According to the petition, these "services" are currently available to chiropractic patients in Oklahoma, Utah, Alaska, Oregon and Idaho, as well as New Mexico and Colorado.  Ten other states are in the process of considering legislation.  We'll return to these unfortunate developments in a future post."   Jann Bellamy, Science Based Medicine (24th January 2012)