So glad to see you highlighting this. I don’t have chronic pain, but there but for the grace of God go I.

Exactly, Suzanne. I see it the same way -- just lucky that I don't have it.

If Trump actually declares a national emergency because some people are addicted to vicodin, he goes back to a D grade from me. I though national emergencies were for wartime, 9/11-style attacks, major natural disasters, a cosmic storm or EMP event, etc.

Keep fighting the good fight, Amy... Your cause is just, but the forces arrayed against you are growing.

And it didn't seem that way just a few years ago! For most of the last three decades, American hospitals were moving in a direction of sincere but proficient attention to how people feel in that most important of all perspectives. And I'm grateful that so many friends and loved ones, if they had to pass away early, passed away in the shelter of that social change. Maybe the nurses (about three of them come to mind) weren't merely compassionate in their metronomic and continuing inquiries about relative suffering, but they always looked the patient in the eye as they asked... If only because they had to remember what to put on the chart once they got back to the desk.

Drug warriors & busybodies on the right and the left have taken over our nation in this century. These are people who enjoy punishing the silly for drug about more than they like reliving the sickly from their torment.

Etc.

Sucks!--- America was really looking pretty good there for a while.

There are few things politicians should be less involved in than other people's use of medications. Especially medications that are used to relieve pain. Why is it so hard for them to understand that it's none of their business?

Crid, it seems to me like we have lurched back and forth between sex moral panics and drug moral panics for the past three decades. First we had the "Waaaaarh! on Drugs" starting in the mid-80s. Then we had satanic-child-sex-ring panic in the '90s. Then, a little later that decade, we had the drinking-and-driving panic. (Not that I'm not talking about drunk driving... I'm talking about when it morphed into a temperance movement, with pressure groups demanding that the blood-alcohol standard for drunk driving be lowered to 0.02 or something equally ridiculous.)

Now we've got the campus-rape moral panic, but it appears that it's starting to wind down, with Jerry Brown vetoing a "yes means yes except when it means no" sex bill in California, and the Education Department retracting the Obama-era regulations. So I guess it's time for another drug moral panic.

And there was Tipper Gore and the PMRC... how could I have forgotten that. I guess that one was a twofer, a moral panic over both sex and drugs, as well as rap music (back when rap was fun).

My cousin died by overdosing on his prescription painkillers after a major surgery.

And I still agree with everything in this post. It drives me insane to see some of my relatives posting/sharing stuff on Facebook about how we need to "crack down" on opioid abuse by "limiting access" or whatever. And doing it in his memory.

People need to work and function to support themselves and their families, even after their knees/shoulders are ripped off and reattached. Even though they have cancer. They need effective painkillers to do that. Unless you're willing to house someone for months and pay all their living expenses while they sit in your home basically catatonic from pain, you don't get to say anything about "limiting access."

We Don't Solve The Opioid Crisis By Creating A Crisis For Chronic Pain Patients

We don't?

I thought that was how we do things in this country - with overblown panic and outrage.

I can't get Sudafed in the drug store anymore because some dirtbag might boil it in kerosene and ingest the results.

I never had a problem when I was given opiods, and perhaps my never becoming addicted (or even craving these drugs) has a genetic component.

I was given an entire bottle of 40 pills of Vicodin once, following some minor surgery. I took one half of one pill, decided I didn't like the sensations and never took any more.

I wonder if technology could devise a way to give those with chronic pain (if they've indicated in the past that they abuse these drugs) a device that dispenses the appropriate number of pills automatically at the appropriate intervals. Obviously, such a devise would need to be tamper resistant and perhaps be equipped with an alarm system that notifies the authorities should anyone attempt to tamper with it.

It would probably be too easy to hack into.

Conan, got a huge laugh out of your last sentence. It's sounds perfectly disgusting, and I don't know if what you said is actually true. But if you're off, it's probably not by much. I've heard of people using liquid pool cleaners for muscular enhancement.

I'm an addict, every guy older than my mother on her side of the family was a drunk, most of the guys older than me were drunks.

I noticed addictive personality traits in my behavior as a teenager and were it not for a, some would say pathological, drive to be in control of myself I'd probably be dead.

Quite frankly I doubt anyone who is not an addict can ever really understand why addicts choose to get high, I know I didnt until I was put on morphine after having part of my lung cut out, but I sure as hell did after. And two days was long enough to make it feel like a was being devoured by fire ants when I went off it

But I've also run the math - for every person who dies of a prescription painkiller overdose, FORTY TWO die from complications from diabetes. So why isnt there a sugar epidemic?

I read the transcript of the GEOTUS statement. I think you're mistaken, Amy, in judging this call for declaration of a public health emergency as a mobilization against cancer patients under properly-prescribed pain medication. You might be a Cloud Person, unaware of what's going on with us Dirt People in Flyover Country. Fentanyl and herion are everywhere, but their users aren't funny like methheads, and so their uniquity and deadly effect among Dirt People seem to escape the attention of Cloud People.

Here's a day in the life, a couple of deaths reported in the NY Daily News:

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/crime/pa-couple-found-dead-overdoses-daughter-alerts-school-article-1.2817758

There's a story or two like that every week in every county in Flyover Country. It would be very, very good to diminish this kind of destructive addiction. I'm glad GEOTUS is taking a shot at it, and pleased he's talking public health vectors, not police state tactics.

I hope and trust that no Cloud People will be unduly disturbed in their prescribed comforts.

It doesn't matter Mike. If they can't get opioid they will get something else that does the exact same thing. We've been around this loop far too many times. You can't stop people from killing themselves. It just doesn't work.

Maybe if they heavily restrict or ban the use of opiates they can prevent the addiction and deaths related to the misuse of opiates. Kind of like how outlawing heroin, which is an opiate, has prevented addiction and death related to the use of heroin. Kind of like that.

sofar: "Unless you're willing to house someone for months and pay all their living expenses while they sit in your home basically catatonic from pain, you don't get to say anything about 'limiting access'."

No, you have to do better than that. Unless you're able and willing to relieve their pain, whatever type of pain it is, you don't get to say anything about limiting their access to whatever they think makes it better.

lujlp: "for every person who dies of a prescription painkiller overdose, FORTY TWO die from complications from diabetes. So why isnt there a sugar epidemic?

That's a good point. Diseases related to obesity and the misuse and abuse of food kill many times more people than opiate abuse. And the percentage of food consumers who suffer harm and death due to the abuse food is way higher than the percentage of opiate users who abuse opiates.

No politician, social welfare advocate or moral do-gooder whose BMI is higher than 24.9 should ever even suggest that someone else's access to a potentially unhealthy substance or product they find beneficial should be restricted or prohibited.

Economic impact, loss of life, and misery related to alcohol abuse and food abuse are both many times higher than for prescription painkillers.

"There's a story or two like that every week in every county in Flyover Country. It would be very, very good to diminish this kind of destructive addiction. I'm glad GEOTUS is taking a shot at it, and pleased he's talking public health vectors, not police state tactics."

I live in some of the flyoverest-flyover country in the U.S. I see what you're talking about. But the fundamental problem isn't drugs; that's just a symptom. The problem is the complete and utter breakdown in culture out in the sticks (and in a lot of towns). I've been watching it gradually unfold since the late 1970s. It was happening well before prescription opioids existed, and banning said opioids would not make any difference.

And I meant to add: If we go down that path, it will indeed evolve/devolve into police state tactics. The last War on Drugs gifted us with the Constitutional abortion known as "civil forfeiture", one of the worst abuses of government power ever inflicted on hapless American citizens. And it's still with us three decades later.

Patrick, people metabolize drugs differently, and even the same person can metabolize the same drug at a different rate if other factors change, for instance if other drugs are added or removed from the regimen, if the method of delivery is changed (pill or patch or intravenous), or if organ function changes.

The patient's personal feedback is the best indicator of what's working. That feedback might not be reliable but there's no more accurate measure of effectiveness.

And yet, in some areas, doctors are practically throwing drugs at patients. We have a shocking stash of pain narcotics in our house from dental work, miscarriages, surgeries, etc., over the past few years. We took what we needed and stashed the rest.

I had dental surgery recently. My dentist offered me a sedative during the procedure and hydrocodone afterward. I turned down the sedative because I had to drive, and I never needed the hydrocodone at all. I don't doubt some people experience pain differently, and I'm glad it's available to them, but I'm really surprised by how much my husband and I have been offered.