The Wages Of The Pill Paranoids
We're so terrified that somebody might get high that we needlessly leave people suffering horrible pain. NYT's Tierney takes on the issue, often covered by Sullum in reason:

At a news conference Wednesday, Dr. Portenoy and the other co-chairman of the Mayday panel, Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer of the University of California, Los Angeles, said patients' needs had to be better balanced against the concerns of law-enforcement officials, whose prosecutions of Dr. Hurtwitz and other doctors have made physicians reluctant to prescribe opioids. Dr. Zeltzer said doctors were especially reluctant to prescribe such painkillers to young people, and she cited the example of a teenager who had been incapacitated for six months until finding a doctor willing to prescribe opioids.

"Don't assume that your doctor knows what to do to treat your pain," Dr. Zeltzer advised patients.

She and the other members of the panel urged better pain-management training in medical schools and more money for pain research, which, according to the report, receives 1 percent of the budget of the National Institutes of Health.

The panel also urged the federal Department of Health and Human Services to reform the way doctors are reimbursed for treating pain. Dr. Portenoy said that the current system had "misaligned incentives" encouraging doctors to preform procedures like injections and surgery and that doctors who performed those procedures could make 10 times as much per hour as doctors who treated pain in other ways.

I deal with the drug paranoids in getting Ritalin, an ADHD drug I've probably been taking for over a decade. Luckily, my troublesome last shrink, the short guy, retired. He had "The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind" and other vintage tomes on his shelf, and never gave me one drop of advice or counsel; he just fought with me to make me come in once a month (instead of once every six months, as I had been until my previous doctor retired).

His interest, of course, wasn't in protecting me, but in protecting himself from the drug police. Before I had to see the short guy, I had two old Jews (old New Yorky men) prescribing for me. They got me from the start -- saw me for who I am: an ambitious nerd who is more productive and less unfocused writing on Ritalin, not some prescription junkie who's going to risk all to sell pills for $5 on the playground.

Meanwhile, to try to keep the short guy from killing one of my writing days once every month by making me come in (plus part of another day dropping off and collecting my Sched. 3 prescription), I kept bringing in stuff like my book deal, the finished manuscript, so he could see where the pills were going. In a way, I can't blame him for trying to hold out on me -- the government makes doctors this way. My convenience and productivity or his medical license? "See you next month!"

Of course, I'm a persuasive girl (big pain in the ass, plus debate ability), and I always eventually managed to squeeze six months out of him...or accidentally/on purpose call when he was on vacation and get one of the unretired old Jews to prescribe them for me.