This is a chance to make your voices heard!
The President’s Commission is accepting comments by email until June 15th. Please help us FLOOD their mail with complaints from chronic pain patients.
The address is [email protected]. You may clip and edit from the following outline as you write your mail. Delete any of the material that doesn’t apply.
PLEASE don’t let this opportunity pass us by.
Your Name
Your Address
Today’s Date
TO: Presidential Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis
Dear Staff,
I am a chronic pain patient diagnosed with insert the names of conditions you have. I have been managed on opioid medications for 10 years, with major improvement to my function and quality of life. I have some pain every day. But without opioids I would be totally disabled and the pain would be unbearable. Nothing else has worked for me and my doctor has tried almost everything.
I live in daily fear that my doctor will be forced out of pain management practice by the arbitrary and ill-founded policies of our government and the CDC, enforced by the bogus drug war, witch hunt conducted by the DEA. Patients like me are committing suicide in increasing numbers because of denial of effective medical care. DO NOT MAKE ME ONE OF THEM!
If the US government is to deal with the opioid epidemic, the first thing you must realize is that managed prescriptions to chronic pain patients didn’t cause the problem. And torturing us by denial of care will only make the mess worse when we must go into the street to get pain relief. I am not an addict, even if I must depend on opioids just to live with my pain. The most reliable predictors for addiction are status as an adolescent (an age when few people are treated for pain,) a history of family trauma, or a period of prolonged unemployment. These are social problems, not medical ones.
Please take action to require withdrawal of the March 2016 CDC guidelines for prescription of opioids. The guidelines are biased, scientifically invalid, and actively dangerous to patients and as public policy.
Sincerely,
Your Name