I think ultimately it (obviously) should be the doctor's call. But we've swung to such an extreme now that most people with severe chronic pain are undertreated

I think ultimately it (obviously) should be the doctor's call. But we've swung to such an extreme now that most people with severe chronic pain are undertreated or (more likely) untreated. I'm convinced that we're 5 years away from yet another backlash when we realize how many people with truly shitty, excruciating conditions are being forced to live in medieval medical conditions due to the current opiate hysteria. Once again, the number of deaths from prescription opiates is dwarfed by the number of opiate deaths from illegal opiates. There's not even a comparison. And the vast majority of the opiate deaths from illegal substances are from fentanyl and related substances, which are notoriously hard to dose and/or frequently spiked and/or passed off as drugs of lesser potency. Imagine the deaths we could prevent if we (as in Europe) allowed addicts to dose themselves with supervised, clean, hygienic, pharmaceutical-grade heroin while offering them treatment to get off of them if they so desired. Edit: I looked up current data and it looks like prescription opiates like oxycontin account for about 1/3 of opiates deaths. Maybe not quite "dwarfed" like I claimed above, but a definite minority of opiate deaths are caused by prescription narcotics. And given the current growth rate of deaths from illegal opiates, it could easily be only 10% in the next 1-2 years: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html