From the article:
Jolly’s death is part of a skyrocketing heroin epidemic devastating families across Kentucky — fueled by a state crackdown on prescription pill abuse that has addicts turning to the illegal street drug to find the same blissful high. Heroin is cheap and potent; a $25 bundle gives the same high as an $80 OxyContin pill.
“Once you’re an addict, you’re more likely to use any drug that’s easily available to you,” said Jennifer Hancock, chief operating officer at Volunteers of America of Kentucky, which provides drug treatment. “I wish I could say there is an end in sight. But I’m worried what we’re seeing is just the beginning.”
It is like they believe that lessening the availability of legal opiates will stop people from abusing some substance to get high…
There is a estimated 16 + times number of chronic pain pts as there are people abusing some substances.. just wonder how many legit chronic pain pts are being denied their medically necessary medications.. while trying to stop people abusing some substances.. which according to this article… seems to being pretty much a absolute failure.
Filed under: General Problems
Due to the intense regulation of controlled substances, the government at both the federal and state level has caused an extreme chilling effect on physicians’ willingness to prescribe certain powerful medications that would help cancer and chronic pain patients. No doctor wants to lose his medical license — his livelihood — over writing a prescription that another doctor could just as easily write. As a result, patients who need these medicines suffer needlessly.
This is called Opiophobia where a health care provider’s unfounded fear that patients will become physically dependent upon or addicted to opioids even when using them appropriately; can lead to the underprescribing of opioids for pain management.
At graduation, some North American medical students repeat the Prayer of Maimonides
“never to forget that the patient is a fellow creature in pain, not a mere vessel of disease.” How could a physician ever forget that a patient is in pain? Don’t physicians confront constant reminders moans, groans, winces, and other obvious manifestations of pain? ….
Well duh? What do you expect?