@wsh66 I agree with you. In the article from Pain News Network (org) they sited a couple statistics that patients of doctors who violate or misuse pain drugs at less than 1% of total users. Yet this data seems to have no effect on the gov. officials
who are making the rules. The biggest problem is with people who buy and use opioid illegally. These are the ones who overdose either by accident or perhaps intentionally. Still the officials will punish the ones who are following the rules and do nothing about those who don't. Of course those who don't follow the rules and not going to anyway. 19lin

Wow! I’m replying to follow up on what has happened? Did the bill pass? I am fortunate to have private insurance first and Medicare second as I am disabled due to a stroke that ended my career as an ICU Nurse in 2011 and left me with a complex Pain Syndrome in my Left Leg. I too have felt the government ‘s obsession with what they call the ‘opiate craze’. My primary physician has lowered the amount of rescue meds I receive and has lock me into a single dose on my main opiate refusing to increase the dose or shorten the time between doses even tho I have been at the same dose and schedule for 2 years and have been taking the drug at varying strengths for 6 years. The kicker is that he’s done it before; gone up in dosage and shortened the time between doses, all medically suggested. It’s the FDA. There watching everyone, looking for unusual activity. Whatever. It’s sad that good, honest people have to suffer BC of the bad apples.

Fortunately the bad apples have now spoiled the entire barrel. It is difficult for those of us who truly need the help. Those of us whom are serious about getting help for their pain have started looking into alternative methods. I can say there are methods that may help some do help some and even a little relief is better than none at all. We are all different. Distraction works the best for me even though it is oft difficult to push through the pain to do so.

It has recently been documented that only 1% of the opioid overdoses result from doctors prescription pads. The rest come from sales of drugs on the street. Many "street" versions of drugs like Oxycontin actually contain Fentanyl which is at least 100 times stronger than the active ingredient in Oxycontin and other prescription pain killers, The problem is, the government needs to be seen to be doing "something" about the problem. There are too many small drug dealers to catch them all. Arrest one and two pop up in their place. Big drug dealers are smart, too smart for most cops. really big drug dealers are really smart and they pay off authorities so they can stay in business. They don't care how many retail dealers get popped, they know more are just waiting to get their start.

We, the people who really need these drugs, and the doctors who are willing to take care of us, who obey their Hippocratic oath, to first do no harm, like the harm they know arises from unabated pain, are the low hanging fruit. Our addresses, our phone numbers, our medical records and the information about our doctors and pharmacies take no effort to obtain. By harassing doctors, and blaming patients they appear before the news cameras as the great saviors of society. If these methods worked, overdose death would decrease, not continue to increase as they are. Law enforcement is great at busting users and street dealers. Law enforcement is completely impotent when it come to keeping heroin out of our country, from shutting down the illegal labs that are producing the fentanyl that is being mixed with the heroin and other drugs on our streets. So the news media stays focused on us and our doctors and they live in fear and we live in pain. Meanwhile the death rate from opiate overdoses continues to rise. Anyone like me who has been taking these drugs for years and will be taking them for the rest of our lives can tell you that obtaining the necessary prescriptions to get our meds has always been like pulling teeth. You are scrutinized, doubted, looked at as if you are scum and even accused of being "drug seekers" by both doctors and nurses. This in spite of the first thing they are told in school about pain is that they or anyone else can know what another individuals pain feels like or how bad it is. They also know that the more control a patient has over the level of drugs they use the lower those levels are. (This is due to the fact that getting that control greatly lowers their level of anxiety and therefore lessens and eases their experience of pain.)

I don't see any improvement of this situation anywhere on the horizon. My advice is if you can get a pain pump, do it. It's obvious that no drug abuser is going to trade 250 mg. of narcotics a day for 2.75 mg. of narcotics a day. Oh yea, it works a lot better too.

Love and Blessings to all my fellow travelers Don't let them shame you, don't let them demand your silence. Call them out on their failure when they don't help you with your pain. This is the worst failure of the medical establishment since the use of leeches and the practice of "bleeding".