The Human Cost of Overregulating Opioids

Jeffrey Miron andErin PartinMany people blame excessive painkiller prescriptions for the rise in opioid overdose deaths over the past two decades; and the government has responded with strict limits on how physicians prescribe opioids. Many pain patients lost access to medications with little warning and no alternative other than illicit opioids. However, arecent Policy Analysis finds that the opioid epidemic has resulted from too many restrictions on prescribing, not too few.A reader who read the PA reached out to us with his story:Your article is spot on. My adult son was prescribed several opioids at a pain clinic for displaced vertebrae in his neck. Surgery was too dangerous, and a pain clinic was recommended. As time went on he needed more and more to kill the pain, but we now know it was addiction. He started using more than prescribed and needed his script filled earlier. The clinic then cut him off telling him to seek treatment elsewhere. No one would take him at that point because the Feds put the hammer down. He did what they all do, go to the street. He was lucky in that his dealer cared about his business and would not sell altered drugs.After he spent all his mother ’s money and ended up in a hospital suffering from withdrawal, I was going to force him to rehab. He is a veteran, so I took him to the VA, where they had him put in outpatient Methadone, to treat the addiction and pain. Four times a year he gets an injection in his neck of cortisone. He is alive an...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs