OPINION:
The country’s gone head-over-heels nuts on opioids, the drug of effectiveness for long-time pain sufferers.
As if cracking down on producers, distributors, insurers and sellers will cure the underlying roots of addiction — the psychological and emotional factors that lead to a practice of self-destruction.
The death stats are impressive, true. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were tied to 42,249 deaths in 2016, a stat that’s five times higher than the ODs recorded in 1999. West Virginia is the worst, followed by Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. For comparison purposes, tobacco smoking was linked to 480,320 deaths between 2005 and 2009; alcohol, to 33,171 in 2015; and driving, to 40,200 in 2016. Even aspirin use carries a risk. More than 3,000 deaths were attributed to aspirin ingestion in the 2016-2017 time frame, researchers said, the Huffington Post reported.
But that doesn’t mean regulation from the feds is the way to go — the way to stop any of these deaths.
Strictly common-sense speaking: If regulation and law truly did their jobs, the country would be crime-free. After all, illegal drug use and distribution is already outlawed.
So what’s the predictable fallout from all this madcap politicized response to the admittedly sad opioid abuse?
Prepare for a blossoming black market for pain meds — a market that may or may not lead to more deaths — and one that will leave the truly chronic pain sufferer out in the cold, scrambling to obtain legally prescribed medications.
The scene will be this — heck, it already is in some parts of the county: A doctor’s prescription won’t guarantee a pharmacy’s honoring of a prescription. A pharmacy’s filling of a prescription won’t guarantee an insurer’s payment of a prescription. A doctor’s prescription, a pharmacy’s OK, and an insurance company’s consent to pay won’t guarantee the filling of the full prescription amount — meaning, the patient will receive, say, only seven of 30 prescribed pills along with a suggestion to return to the doctor to obtain further permission for additional pain pills.
This is not how America’s medical field is supposed to operate.
This is not what conservatives supposedly fought for when they ranted and screamed against government takeover of the free-market health care system — against Obamacare.
And here’s a somewhat scary thought for anyone who may face an accident or unexpected medical crisis in the future: Don’t even go to the hospital in any sort of pain and expect immediate or long-term relief. Staffers, nurses, medical providers and the like are routinely being trained to shy away from providing dosages of powerful pain meds, the kind that actually work, in favor of lesser amounts that may take the edge off, but leave the patient unable to sleep, or worse, chewing over some snarky and oh-so-lame suggestion of trying a mind-over-matter approach while being offered two ibuprofen in a Dixie cup.
Why?
Hospital administrators don’t want to be sued. They don’t want to lose insurance business. They don’t want to bring down the heavy breathing of the federal overseers — federal overseers who, removed as they are from the realities of chronic-pain sufferers, are focusing only on reducing the death toll before the next press conference. And how do they do that?
They regulate. It’s the Political Disease.
They say things like this, from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a speech at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa: “I am operating on the assumption that this country prescribes too many opioids. I mean, people need to take some aspirin sometimes and tough it out a little. That’s what Gen. [John] Kelly — you know, he’s a Marine — [he] had surgery on his hands, painful surgery, [and he said], ’I’m not taking any drugs.’ It did hurt, though. It did hurt. A lot of people — you can get through these things.
That may be.
But it’s really not for the federal government to decide.
That’s a discussion and decision best left between the patient and doctor. Republicans used to believe this.
Moreover, if the federal government really wants to fight the opioid death rate, how about taking action that actually addresses the root of illegal drug use?
How about contracting to build more drug-counseling centers in key spots of the nation? Or initiating programs that reward families for staying together, for remaining two-parent households? Or creating more recreational and after-school centers for youth? Or incentivizing churches, pastors, religious nonprofits to get even more involved with the at-risk in their communities? Or adopting a national campaign that calls on more individual volunteering in groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America? Or pressing Congress to allot more money to outfits like the National CASA Association, a group that receives funding through the Justice Department and that works to save children from abuse?
Those are but a few ideas with the common denominator of this: They actually fight the root causes of addiction.
But regulating away pain meds?
Not on the list. The government crackdown may bring a bit of a lull in death stats — but only until users find another high, another drug of choice. And in the meanwhile, true pain sufferers, truly chronic victims, will have a lot of sleepless nights.
But at least the government gets some bragging rights with the data. Right?
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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