Oregon Health Authority Has It Wrong

Opinion: Oregon Health Authority Has It Wrong – National Pain Report – By Richard “Red” Lawhern, Ph.D. – Nov 2018

The fundamental errors which the Oregon Health Authority is trying to make policy can be traced to unproven or simply wrong assumptions around which the 2016 CDC Guidelines on prescription of opioids to chronic pain patients were based.

These assumptions were:

(1)  The US is said to have a public health crisis in opioid addiction and overdose mortality caused by physicians over-prescribing medical opioids to their patients. Restrictions and enhanced oversight of medical opioid prescriptions are therefore deemed to be warranted to prevent further exposure of both patients and their untreated family members to such potential sources of addiction and death.