Two good articles this week: The first, from the Magazine, starts with Ronald McIver, a pain doc recently convicted of federal drug charges and sentenced to thirty years in the federal clink despite the facts that:
Prosecutors never brought any evidence that he intended to write prescriptions to be abused or sold. They never accused him of profiting from his patients’ diversion except in collecting office fees. His patients who diverted or abused their opioids all testified they got their prescriptions by consistently lying to him. Nor is it convincing that his prescriptions killed Larry Shealy.
It then leads through ten pages of what we know and don't know about pain and pain management, and why the government and public's approach to opioid drug use is not only empirically unsupported but morally and ethically challenged as well.
The second, "Stars Check In, Stars Check Out" is hidden in the Sytle section, but has a good if incomplete overview of addiction treatment - namely, there's not enough of it, what's there often doesn't work, at least the first time, and, most importantly, total abstinence is not the way to go for most people.
Check them out.