> We've probably had less of a need for legal painkillers than ever - surgery and medical technology keeps getting better and better - minimally invasive and th

> We've probably had less of a need for legal painkillers than ever - surgery and medical technology keeps getting better and better - minimally invasive and the like - and yet we have more legal painkillers than ever. The vast majority of prescription painkillers go not to surgical patients, who usually take a week or two course and are done, but to patients suffering from crippling nerve disorders and cancers, who take the medication for long periods of time, and who are little helped by our advances in surgical technology. Absent narcotic painkillers, cancer and diseases like chronic shingles and trigeminal neuralgia ("the suicide disease") are just as painful as they were 100 years ago.