painkillers

In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines for prescribing opioids for pain, allowing physicians more flexibility. But doctors, patients, and advocates wonder if the updated standards will be too little, too late to help chronic pain patients in a country still focused on fighting the ongoing opioid crisis.

The DEA plans to reinstate once longstanding requirements that were waived once COVID hit, enabling doctors to write millions of prescriptions for drugs such as OxyContin or Adderall without meeting patients in person.

Doctors say they're increasingly concerned about the threat of violence, especially from patients seeking relief from pain.

COVID survivors are at risk from a possible second pandemic, this time of opioid addiction, given the high rate of painkillers being prescribed to these patients, health experts say.

With the deadly opioid fentanyl pushing overdose deaths to record levels, federal officials hope buprenorphine will save lives in parts of the country where the drug is rarely prescribed.

While the opioid problem in the U.S. is about too many opioids, in some countries there are few options for treating or controlling pain.

Washington Post journalist Scott Higham says recently released evidence shows the drug industry purposely shipped big quantities of opioids to communities without regard for how they were being used.

States are passing laws that limit a doctor's ability to prescribe opioids. Doctors and patients alike are wrestling with what that means in cases of chronic pain

Other towns were similarly inundated, in a state that now has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths. In 2008, one wholesaler provided 5,624 pills for every man, woman and child in Kermit, W.Va.

Surgeons complain it’s too restrictive for patients who undergo major heart surgery or hip replacement. Emergency room doctors gripe they don’t have the…