It might be useful to point out a little bit about laser injuries and their physical manifestation. If a laser pointer of sufficient power to cause injury at close range was to be directed against the back of your hand, you would suffer a burn injury. It would be similar to holding a fine tipped soldering iron against the skin. You would receive a localised burn that may be quite deep and would blister over. It would certainly be painful, but the cause of the injury, would be from intense localised heat. An eye injury would be similar and cause a retinal burn over a small area.
At a greater distance and allowing for the beam to diverge, the danger from a heat injury is reduced. The nature of the injury would change to that of an "optical flash burn", similar to arc eye suffered by welders, of women who frequent tanning salons without the correct protective goggles. In these cases, this is more likely the type of injury to be caused by these laser incidents. Having suffered a flash type injury (intense UV light source from an HID lamp) I can attest to them being very painful (burning sensation and gritty FOD feeling) and disorienting as are most eye injuries and medical attention is indeed warranted.
In both cases, the eye will heal, although the small diameter beam injury can leave permanent damage. I have a colleague who suffered an argon laser eye injury and has a (very small) permanent black spot in his vision. This was from a 2.5 watt laser at a distance of about 50 cm though and argon lasers have much tighter collimated beams than laser pointers do.
So yes, lasers can injure, but at distance, it will more likely be a temporary flash injury as opposed to a more permanent heat initiated burn injury.