For Immediate Release
September 4, 2018
Contacts:
Diane Coleman 708.420.0539
Dominick Evans 937.776.6330
Not Dead Yet Urges FDA To Help People With Chronic Pain
and Reject Misguided Opioid Crackdowns
In response to the federal Food and Drug Administration’s request for comments on “the impacts of chronic pain, treatment approaches for chronic pain, and challenges or barriers to accessing treatments”, Not Dead Yet today filed a public comment on the harms caused by misguided crackdowns on legitimate opioid prescriptions for people with chronic pain.
“What we are seeing is many disabled people who are suffering due to the lack of access to opioid medication previously available as part of comprehensive strategies and approaches to address chronic pain,” the comment states.
“For some disabled people, opioids are the only medication or treatment that can help their pain. Now those who have chronic pain are treated with suspicion, as though they are abusing opioids, especially by medical personnel at doctors’ offices and hospitals. This is an even greater problem for people of color who have chronic pain, whom studies show already experience serious disparities in pain treatment.”
Many of the concerns expressed by people with chronic pain are validated by medical professionals in the field of pain management. “[A]n editorial in the American Journal of Public Health recently argued that the death rate from prescription opioids is inflated by including deaths where synthetic opioids like illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) play a role,” the comment states. Quoting from a letter sent by over a dozen professionals in response to an Oregon proposal, the comment focused in on critical data demonstrating that:
“[C]urtailed opioid prescribing has not correlated with a reduction in drug-overdose deaths. Although prescribing has dropped every year since 2012, drug overdose deaths during the same period have skyrocketed as the crisis has evolved to feature heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl and its analogs.”
Disability advocates also “noted that alternative therapies to treat pain are often not covered by insurance and may be unavailable to people with chronic pain for geographic or other reasons. Providers of alternative therapies may also be inaccessible to people with disabilities. And even people who can access the alternatives may find that they are either not helpful, or that they are most helpful when combined with opioids as part of a comprehensive/multi-faceted pain management plan.”
To read the full written comment, go here.