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PatientAdvocate

People who want to abuse drugs will get them no matter what the laws are. More half-baked laws will only make it harder for people in pain to get the help they need. Keep the Legislature out of our examination rooms and medicine cabinets. Go after the people who divert drugs to the street and leave the doctors and the patients alone. But laws aren't very good for that. Instead, the guilty will continue to prosper and the legit pain patients will have to suffer when docs are too scared to help them. The lawmakers should focus on problems that laws can fix, not useless legislation that only makes it harder for people to get help. Politicians should stay out of the medical field. They only will add insult to injury. I will not vote for anyone who jumps on the nail-the-docs bandwagon and will actively campaign against those who support laws that can only get in the way of patients getting relief from pain.

I agree with PainDoc. Numbers mean nothing without context. The MedExaminers already intrude on doctors who presecribe painkillers based on numbers alone, and when the docs are summoned it turns out the "excessive" meds were prescribed to elderly, non-ambulatory patients in intractable pain. The Sun's junk science and the lawmaker's naive reaction will only make more doctors afraid to prescribe medication to patients and result in incalcuable suffering for people who need the meds but can't get them. This was the case years ago before the AMA declared pain a "vital sign." The Sun's hysteria will bring us back to those dark ages, Shame on the Sun and the editors who publish nonsense and then call it "stunning" journalism. The only thing stunning is the Sun's stupidity.