STOPP Now is an outspoken anti-opioid/anti-pain management organization which has taken an active role in the persecution of compassionate Doctors. The group is founded by three mothers who have lost their adult children to accidents in which opioids were involved.
STOPP Now routinely organizes rallies and protests at medical clinics, and has shown outspoken support for the war on drugs, for the pain doc Witch Hunt, for increased government restrictions on opioids, and for a ban on OxyContin.
I offer my condolences to any parent who has lost a child to problem drug use or an overdose. But having said that, I can not let emotional appeal interfere with my logical interpretation of the issue, as it does not negate science nor fact. Nor does is negate the reality of human suffering caused by cancer and noncancer pain alike, as well as severe mood disorders. I have written the following to the STOPP now group.
"For people who have chronic pain, they have to learn a different way." ~ Renee Doyle - Who Claims that individuals who are not on their death bed should not have access to long term opioid therapy.
I find it very odd how individuals (or groups such as STOPP) are so very concerned with the personal lives of strangers; such as the way they manage their pain, and the extent to which it is managed...
Having said that, I will do everything in my power to protect the public from the misinformation spewed by your group. Your group's message represents an obvious attempt to forcefully strip individuals and markets of their freedom, and demonstrates a disturbing trend which has emerged in our modern society - a trend consisting of government micromanagement, NANNY STATE politics, regulating away lifestyle risk, abandoning personal responsibility, destroying free markets, and a pattern of BLAMING OTHERS who "could have prevented" individuals from acts of stupidity and self destruction. Who are you, and who is the government, to determine which individual's pain is worthy of palliative measures (opioids)?
If your group is so adamant about banning narcotics or wiping the poppy from the earth, you surely must be okay with banning water, high fat foods, lighters and matches, alcoholic beverages, gambling, robitussin DM, premarital sex, tanning beds, motorcycles, automobiles, and tall buildings from which people can jump as well. It seems you are among the crowd who perceive the federal government as an authoritative 'PARENTAL' figure to adult citizens; and who is responsible for eliminating (i.e. criminalizing) any substance, object, or activity that might pose a potential threat when used incompetently - Even going as far as to dictate medical practice.
What if every parent who lost a [grown adult] child to some accident - say, an unintentional drowning or motorcycle crash - were to demand that water or bikes (or any applicable object) be 'banned'? Does the fact that your full grown adult child wandered into the road like an idiot or consumed a massive dose of a drug he knew little about, negate the freedom of others to have access to drugs that supress their suffering? Does it make your child's Doctor responsible for the manner in which these drugs were used? There once was a point in our culture - that when one was in pain or distress, doctors could simply give these patients the benefit of the doubt, without having to perform 'background checks' (i.e. med records) & police patient medication use, without having to worry about becoming a FELON for doing so. In fact, isn't a trusting and compassionate doctor exactly the type YOU WOULD WANT if you were suffering?
You help to perpetuate the WITCH HUNT against compassionate doctors and opioids - drugs which are in fact significantly less harmful than alcohol, not to mention non toxic to the organs and safe when taken responsibly. If your grown adult child had died from being idiotic with a motorcycle, you would likely be rallying to ban Harley's. Your group, all that you suggest, all that you stand for; is pathetic, irrational, unintelligent, childish, and unfounded. I feel the duty to protect vulnerable individuals from falling prey to your misinformation. You are propagandists, not activists. You are fearmongers, not educators.
5 comments:
One of the founder's lost their son to addiction but not directly. It was indirect, their son was hit by a car and killed.
When contacting them to ask why they want to hurt so many already hurting their response was to call me a heartless bitch. While addiction of any kind is painful to watch a love one go through, the war these women are waging on chronic pain patients is raising the suicide rate among those suffering with treatable but debilitating chronic pain. Stoppnow must be stopped now from turning their grieving into a crusade that hurts untold thousands of people in the state of Florida alone.
really long comments: sorry.
One of the older newspaper articles explained one of the leader's (I believe the woman who actually started the group) motivation behind the group. Her daughter was given a prescription for pain medication (oxycodone) for chronic pain due to an injury to her back. According to the doctor (he was contacted for the article) he was quoted as saying that her tests backed up her pain, MRI or cat scan. The article went on to mention that she had a boyfriend, whether he was involved in drug addiction or not, was not made clear, he was just mentioned. It went on to say that the young woman became addicted to the drugs and eventually accidentally overdosed when she mixed the prescription medication with other drugs and alcohol.
With the way the DEA gets its overdose on oxycodone statistics, even if it was not the oxycodone itself that caused the death (rather alcohol poisoning for example, car accident, assault, etc), she would still be counted as an oxycodone death simply because she had it in her system at the time she died. They also count people who die in a place where a bottle of oxycodone can be found, even if none of the drug is found in their system and thus had nothing to do with their death. It is this padding of the numbers that allows them to scream 7 deaths per day. They've been screaming this same thing for a few years so do the math 7/day x 365 days = 2,555 people per year x 36 (3 years) that is 91,980 deaths in Florida. Yet according to the CDC overdose deaths have remained steady since around 2002 (I believe it was). If 91 thousand addicts died, there shouldn't be any left after three years! I learned about how the DEA teaches other law enforcement agency to handle drug investigations here: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa545.pdf Reading this terrified me. Yes it was written in 2005, but obviously these methods worked for them so I seriously doubt they'll change their methods now. They get a lot of money when they go after doctors.
part 2:
Now I completely understand this woman wanting/needing someone to blame other than her adult child for the addiction same as I would love to blame someone else for some of the behaviors I inadvertently taught my daughter (though I don't, I blame myself because I know she learned them from me). However, the sad truth is this young woman was probably already doing street drugs (based on the mixture of chemicals that killed her) when she got the prescription. Anyone who already has an addiction in their past (whether they are currently using or not) is at increased risk of developing an addiction to prescription pain killers as well and must be closely monitored and educated about their pain management. This woman, as a mother, probably watched her daughter go through hell with the drugs and turn into a completely different person than she used to be. This mother would have a great deal of mental and emotional pain during this process, especially if she could not stop her adult child (rehab doesn't work if the patient does not want to quit) from self-destruction. Rather than believe that she somehow "failed" her child as a mother, she is turning that guilt and anger outwards and blaming the doctors because that is less painful than having to consider she may have done something wrong (even if she didn't do anything wrong, "mommy guilt" isn't logical). It is also the standard response in our society now to blame other people for our own behaviors, the whole "victim mentality". I happen to agree with you that people should be held responsible for their own actions, especially adults who are not mentally incapacitated in some way and thus have the ability for mature reasoning skills and self-control if they bothered to use it. It is easier for her to blame the doctor for giving her daughter the prescription, than to blame her daughter for not using the medication correctly or lying to the doctor to get the medication in the first place.
part 3:
I agree that the majority of the blame lays on her daughter's shoulders because she made the choice to get high, drink alcohol, and ingest whatever other chemicals she ingested. Her choices, her actions, no one forced her so she holds the responsibility for her own death.
I also agree that her personal loss is not a good reason to remove medical care, pain management etc. from legitimate patients who need it.
However, her group's goal is wrong in my opinion. She wants to ban all pain management, oxycodone (the narcotic ingredient in percocet. It is now made by itself [short acting and extended release] to protect people from acetaminophen [tylenol] overdose or extended use liver damage) in particular, as that is what her daughter was given, and all narcotic pain killers and only allow those who are on their death beds to get pain control. One of the problem with this scenario (and there are many) is this: How can the terminally ill people get pain management if this group succeeds in making all narcotic pain killers illegal and removing "pain management" as a specialty or part of a doctor's practice when all pain medications are illegal and the doctors best able to handle pain management no longer exist? I really believe that she is kidding herself about a great many things.
last part: (Maybe I should have just written a blog entry in response and posted the URL)
When I contacted this group my response (and the response that others have gotten) included statements such as "chronic pain does NOT exist!" and "There are no medical conditions that cause chronic pain". I was called a bitch, addict, and child killer for my attempts to educate them with some factual information about opiates. For an "advocacy" group, they sure aren't doing a great job in attempting to gain members with the way they respond to polite respectful inquiries (cursing, insults etc.). I wonder how they would feel if their worst insults, quotes etc. were posted on signs and held up by people picketing one of their pickets at a doctor's office? Would they be ashamed of their own behavior or just brand us all as addicts?
I agree, this group is dangerous and her motives are not well intended, they are personal as a result of emotional pain, which is never a good thing to base any major decisions on.
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