Thanks for the reply, sears. My doctor believes (and I am inclined to agree with him) that this has nothing to do with patient safety. As always, one should "follow the money", he says. Groups (I won't say who he suggests) are putting pressure on government bodies with campaign contributions to get people off the legal stuff in hopes of pushing them to the streets. I believe that, just as with hydrocodone, previously a Schedule 3 which was rescheduled to Schedule 2 in 2018, benzos, currently Schedule 4, will be put into Schedule 3 and then to Schedule 2 and when that happens the Fed will do what it did to physicians who were prescribing Schedule 2 painkillers: pay any doctors who are prescribing benzos a visit and in a very forceful way, explain to them that if they continue prescribing benzos they will be at risk of losing their license to practice medicine.

I don't want to turn this into a political discussion. I'll just say I don't like the direction this government is pushing people who depend on such medications for their quality of life. I am in a position where if doctors threatened to cut me off completely unless I involuntarily agreed to a taper program (and benzos taken for years cannot be weaned down in a matter of months--it literally can take years) then I would be forced to look overseas for countries that might have much more relaxed laws for foreigners who are bringing in retirement money to spend in their countries. That's a worse case, but like you I can see the writing on the wall and I won't wait around hoping things get better because I saw what happened to chronic pain patients and how the rates of suicide skyrocketed when they were cut off and I don't want to be any part of that.