Restrictions include limiting primary care physicians and dentists to prescribing opioids for seven days for adults or five days for minors; and requiring doctors to provide a specific diagnosis and procedure code for every painkiller prescription. However, the language is crystal clear that these rules do not apply to painkillers as part of cancer treatment or hospice care, and that the restrictions are meant to apply to those suffering from acute pain, not chronic pain.

In fact, in the governor’s own description of the new rules, “for acute pain prescribing,” it is spelled out rather plainly, “The new limits do not apply to opioids prescribed for cancer, palliative care, end-of-life/hospice care or medication-assisted treatment for addiction.”

So why are these few patients so upset?

Well, one woman told NBC News she did not believe the governor because “the online message boards for chronic pain sufferers lit up after Kasich unveiled the restrictions.”

Another woman, who says she has been suffering from complex regional pain syndrome since 2011 when a falling bookcase crushed her foot, said “I understand that there is a drug epidemic, but by doing this it is affecting people like me.”

She does not understand.

Ohio and the rest of our region are being ravaged. The number of fatal overdoses from opioids such as oxycodone have more than quadrupled nationwide, since 1999. By 2013, overprescribing had reached such absurd levels — approximately 250 million prescriptions that year — that there were enough prescription painkillers floating around for every person in the country to have a bottle, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kasich, the state Department of Health and the state Board of Pharmacy are right to implement rules that might stem the tide. And, again, they are doing so in a way they stress is NOT meant to punish chronic pain sufferers. The cries of those who fail to see the magnitude of this epidemic, and imagine they might be “affected,” should be disregarded.

This moronic, opiophobic editor has pointed out what could be the “ulterior motive” for all of these bureaucratic agencies with their opiate dosing guidelines.  They create rules/laws/guidelines that are not suppose to affect chronic pain pts… but when prescribers start cutting back and stopping chronic pain pts pain management meds they do NOTHING. Where are the various bureaucratic agencies (Medical, pharmacy, etc ) whose primary charge is to protect the public’s health and safety… in seeing that prescribers and pharmacists observe the new laws that are suppose to make sure that chronic pain pts are being taken care of  by the healthcare providers that they are suppose to oversee ?

It is a well known fact that those families with a chronic pain pt… 90% are struggling financially and that law firms will not sue on a contingency basis for a person who is handicapped/disabled, elderly, unemployable.. .because in our legal system the “value of life” of one of these pts has LITTLE VALUE… So it appears that we are slowly moving toward a prohibition of the prescribing of opiates without officially declaring such a prohibition.

I guess that they learned their lesson from about 100 yrs ago when they tried to have a prohibition of alcohol.