First Hospital in NJ to end opioid use for pain? WT??

[Spanky]

Thanks for that REV. 
 
Unfortunately it's the bureaucracies looking for a quick fix.  And we are it.  Just yesterday it seems, Mary Jane was the definitive gateway to opioid dependency.  Now it's rx pks.  All the gang bangers are apparently raiding their parents medicine cabinets and overnight graduating to street crimes to support their habits.  I don't think so. 
 
It's the new boogie man, and politicians are waking up to a real drug problem, and dealing with it in a political, not social, manner.  I think Rev is right, they will soon be rewarding docs who refuse to prescribe needed meds, and feet to the fire to those who do.  It bleeds seamlessly into a moral issue, where those not in need legislate for abstinence in the name of a better world. 
 
There seems to be no balance in this issue.  Turn of the century coke was in Coke and Dr. Pepper and you could order you hypodermic outfit from a Sears catalog.  Now, I am sent home from oral surgery with  scrip that says take two every four hours for pain, but the bottle only has fifteen pills.  Soon you will be sent home with a sterilized strip of rawhide to bite down on.  To object is to brand yourself as a junkie pariah.  We have become the evil pinball, and docs the hapless bumpers that reflexively repel you. 
 
The tried the same with alcohol as I recall.  The result was not what the government expected.  I hope Audrey Hepburn is correct, but fear that bit of ethical clarification will be lost in the snowball that's bearing down.  Cottage pharma industries will proliferate, drug sniffing do-gooders will stand tall and righteous, and my mouth still hurts. 
 
 
Spanky