U.S. - How the opioid crackdown is backfiring

[S.J.B.]

How the opioid crackdown is backfiring
Brianna Ehley
Politico
August 28th, 2018

Last August, Jon Fowlkes told his wife he planned to kill himself.

The former law enforcement officer was in constant pain after his doctor had abruptly cut off the twice-a-day OxyContin that had helped him endure excruciating back pain from a motorcycle crash almost two decades ago that had left him nearly paralyzed despite multiple surgeries.

"I came into the office one day and he said, 'You have to find another doctor. You can't come here anymore,'" Fowlkes, 58, recalled. The doctor gave him one last prescription and sent him away.

Like many Americans with chronic, disabling pain, Fowlkes felt angry and betrayed as state and federal regulators, starting in the Obama years and intensifying under President Donald Trump, cracked down on opioid prescribing to reduce the toll of overdose deaths. Hundreds of patients responding to a POLITICO reader survey told similar stories of being suddenly refused prescriptions for medications they'd relied on for years -- sometimes just to get out of bed in the morning -- and left to suffer untreated pain on top of withdrawal symptoms like vomiting and insomnia.

"I was pretty much thrown to the curb," said Denise Pascal, 65, who had taken pain meds for decades after six back surgeries. Then her pain doctor cut her off and closed her practice without connecting her with another specialist.

Read the full story here.

 

[S.J.B.]

This has to become the prevailing narrative. When "fairly normal person has their pain meds yanked away and is considering suicide" is more front of mind than "fairly normal person became addicted to street opioids thanks to Big Pharma" then this miserable situation might start to improve.

 

[BeachBum4u]

It's like the folks in charge of these matters are incapable of processing the "chess like" moves required to properly do their job! It's like they can't wrap their heads around the fact that a given decision may have unintended ramifications which really need to be carefully thought out before proceeding. Seems to me that very often decisions are made with total disregard for all the "what ifs" that really need to be considered before forging ahead! I beg of all these law makers to please do your homework for crying out loud!

 

[cj]

I'm still against the narrative that over prescribing caused this opiate problem. It's way more complicated then that

 

[Jabberwocky]

^agreed, it’s infinitely more complicated than that. If anything its a relatively small aspect of how we have gotten to where we are today. Not unimportant, but certain not the main driving force.

Thing is, people love scapegoats. The demonized junkie isn’t as popular as it once was, cause now it seems everyone knows someone who is suffering. So we have a new scapegoat, the pharmaceutical industry.

It’s so much more complicated, but people love having someone to hate....