

The Champion of Painkillers - tokenadult
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-champion-of-painkillers

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kls
_The problem isn't opioids, Rowe and other group leaders say. It's poorly
trained doctors who prescribe them too easily or in excess._

No the problem is America and a decent portion of the western world refuses to
treat addiction and chemical dependance in a manner that deal with the issue.

The reality is much more complicated then doctors education and is closer
reflected in stating that there are a group of people that due to mental or
emotional issues find day to day living more bearable by abusing chemicals.
They are in essence self medicating mental health issues because either they
are poor and cannot afford treatment, or the medicines that the mental health
professionals prescribed did not work for their case. In the case of opiates
it provides euphoria which masks the symptoms of depression as well as some of
the other disorders and as such it reduces the symptoms of their condition.

If we had a program where these individuals could get help with less dangerous
alternatives, a program where they where specifically treated for their
disorder, then we would not have these patients infiltrating the pain
treatment institution. What we don't need is a program that it's first course
of action is to remove them from a chemical that they have come to believe is
the only one that helps. Rather a program that replaces the chemical with a
safer, similar alternative as well as one that phases in other treatments.

The problem as it sits now, is that these people can only help themselves via
the streets, a pain doctor, or through a rag tag confederation of volunteer
agencies. Until we stop treating drug abuse as a moral issue, we are doomed to
have an ever increasing drug problem because articles like this advocate
making medicine less available to pain patients of patients, due to the fact
that they refuse to treat addiction patients properly. They then throw up the
same tired moral arguments as if, pain patients are supposed to suffer because
another class of patients (who should be responsible for their actions)
chooses to abuse medicine. The article argues that we should make pain
patients responsible for addicts choices by limiting the availability of
medicine to both classes. It's dumb ass moral logic at it's finest.

