Exactly. And that’s what a doctor is supposed to do. That is why certain medications require a prescription. Much in the same way that it’s considered better to let five criminals go free than to unjustly punish one innocent, I think it’s better to let five people who arguably don’t need it get medication than to deny it to one person who truly does need it.

There is an attitude in this country that if something is being abused, especially medication, that the best and only response of government and society should be to make that thing harder to get. But that doesn’t stop abuse. It has literally never worked in the past, and it does not work now. If someone is addicted to prescription painkillers and you deny them the prescription, they aren’t going to say ‘aw shucks I guess it’s time to clean up my life and get a job’. They’re going to get their fix somewhere else.

And the result is that real patients get harmed. My partner is lucky to have a good medical team. But you hear lots of stories of people who go for surgery and get literally cut open and are sent home with basically Tylenol because the surgeon is terrified to have too many opiates on his prescription record. That isn’t okay. Our solution to one problem is not only making it worse it is causing another problem.