On the heels of reportedly the biggest ketamine bust in United States history, one of the nation's most prominent anesthesiologists is hailing the drug as being the single most important advance in the field of anesthesia in the last 40 years.

On the club scene, the rave drug "Special K" is snorted or smoked, resulting in PCP-like hallucinations. But in the operating room, Dr. Barry Friedberg says it's a pain blocker that far out-performs traditional narcotics such as morphine, Demerol and fentanyl.

"There is no doubt in my mind that this drug is the smarter, SAFER choice for inhibiting pain in the OR," says Friedberg, who is a pioneer of the controversial drug's use and the inventor of the propofol ketamine (PK) anesthesia technique. "Over the course of tens of thousands of cases where doctors have used the PK technique, there have been no reports of even the slightest injury."

Emergency room visits caused by recreational use of the drug have increased more than 10-fold from to , according to U.S. Department of Health, and ketamine has been indicted in several well-publicized incidents in which teens have suffered brain damage or even death. Friedberg emphasizes that the drug should never, ever be taken outside of the clinical setting. "There is no regulation what-so-ever of the ketamine kids are taking and no way of testing it for purity or dosage, which makes the drug infinitely more dangerous," continues the Newport Beach, Calif.-based anesthesiologist. "When used medically, we know exactly what and how much we're giving patients, and we're monitoring the process from start to finish and beyond."

But still, Friedberg is concerned about a public knee-jerk reaction against its clinical use. "The number of people who have had a safer surgical experience and recovery as a result of this drug is enormous," he says. "Hopefully, people won't jump to uninformed conclusions."