Abstract

*Dr. Richard A. Lawhern

ABSTRACT

At age 80, I am a widely published healthcare writer[1], with over 250 papers, articles and interviews in peer reviewed journals and mass media during the past 28 years. My beat is public health policy for treatment of severe pain. I am motivated. My wife of 45 years is a chronic pain patient. I hear from hundreds of others like her every week. From extensive research, I am convinced that ?everything the government thinks it knows about the opioid crisis is wrong.?[2] For more than a decade, the US public has been hearing that prescription opioid pain relievers are always and forever a ?BAD THING.” Doctors and Big Pharma companies are supposedly responsible for an epidemic of addiction and drug overdose deaths. However, patients are being denied pain care all across America. Doctors are being sent to prison[3] for imagined ?offenses? that harmed not one patient. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Veterans Administration, and US law enforcement (Drug Enforcement Administration) have chosen to ?pile on? this catastrophe. They simply assume without supporting data that doctors are guilty of causing widespread addiction and overdose in patients who are treated with opioid pain relievers. Their ?solution? for this mess is to deny pain relief to people in agony and to persecute their healthcare providers on unscientific innuendo. I believe these Agencies knew they were lying before they published their restrictive prescribing guidelines. Despite widespread damage from their policies for millions of people denied safe and effective pain treatment, the Agencies continue defending themselves against public challenge by any means, fair or foul.[4]