1-Stop the, 'Over prescribing caused the opioid crisis.' narrative. I read article after article where 'liberal prescribing' is ascribed as the cause of the so called #opioidcrisis.
Many articles are written by people in our own community, self proclaimed pain pt ‘advocates’.
2-To this, I’d like to point out that in OC even a judge recently ruled:
"There is simply no evidence to show that the rise in prescriptions was not the result of the medically appropriate provision of pain medications to patients in need,"
#RxOpioidsSaveLives
#ChronicPain
3-Here is the link to that quote and ruling above: reuters.com/world/us/calif…
4-RXs rose after GOV set about creating a mandate for MDs to TREAT PAIN as pain was undertreated across the board, stating in the Pain Relief Promotion Act:
“Practitioners should be encouraged to treat pain aggressively even when the treatment may increase the risk of death.”
5-That quote above is found in the 3rd paragraph of the Pain Relief Promotion Act, linked here. Please note all those presiding on the committee. govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CH….
6-As far as the increase in ODs, there were a myriad of other factors going on in the U.S. at the time that ODs began to rise. 9-11, the ‘war on terror’, the financial collapse due to Wall Street corruption, people losing homes, jobs, particularly manufacturing and coal jobs.
7- White Middle/Upper Class America was particularly impacted and the ‘face of addiction’ began to change, no longer were overdoses and addiction relegated to the streets where minorities and poor whites primarily lived, addiction and overdose began to touch all of us.
8-No longer was the U.S. ADX mantra “JAIL THEM!” It became “ADDICTION IS A DISEASE."
Affluent ppl began blaming MDs-
Saying an MD ‘got your loved one hooked’ is a far less bitter pill to swallow than realizing that addiction can touch anyone no matter your social standing. 😔
9- Instead of realizing the complex underlying causes regarding ODs, we opted to attribute the rise in RXing to the ‘cause’ of overdoses, even overlooking the fact that our own Gov had called for a mandate for MDs to treat pain as outlined above in this thread.
10-This madness has to stop.
11-And if anyone wants to start railing about ‘pill mills’, Dr. Stephen Zeigler addresses this at about 4 minutes in with George Knapp- Great interview btw...Oldie but a goodie.
12-I’d also DARE assert- if we have taken ‘pill mills’ and turned them into actual #harmreduction centers where people could get SAFE, REGULATED, KNOWN POTENCY medicines, as well as any other services they might need/want to help w/recovery, maybe things would be different today.
13-Maybe we’d actually have helped reduce ODs instead of enacting PROHIBITION like tactics that have lead to untold suffering in both the ADX community as well as the pain community. Not to mention preventing MDs who truly want to help people have targets painted on their backs.
14-My life’s been destroyed.
Denied needed medicine, medically abandoned,now losing my eldest daughter to illicit Fentanyl Poisoning.
What we are doing to address addiction/ODs has made things worse- I will #ScreamLouder until sanity returns to the table.
15-To Legislators/Media/CDC/and even some of our own ‘advocates’, you're saving NO ONE. The ‘opioid crisis’ approach has done only HARM.
Shame on ALL of you.
It's not like you haven’t known this now for years. We’ve been begging to be heard since before the official GLs came out.
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