SEEKING RELIEF
Pain patients rally outside Oklahoma attorney general's office
About 40 chronic pain patients and their advocates rallied outside the Oklahoma attorney general' s office Wednesday, complaining that the government crackdown on opioid overprescribing has made it difficult to obtain the pain relief they need.
“I need my pain medication just to do stuff around my home,” said Jo Shaw of Harrah.
“It's just sad to think that one day, if I wake up and I go to my doctor and he's not going to give me my pain medicine — that's scary. That's terrifying to me. I've had friends commit suicide because they've taken theirs away,” Shaw said.
Shaw said she has 17 grandchildren and would love to attend their games, but has had to skip them because of pain. Tears welled up in her eyes as she talked about her inability to travel to the football games of grandson Sean Shaw Jr., who plays wide receiver for Iowa State University.
The abuse of opioid pain medications by some manufacturers, doctors and patients has became a national crisis. States and other governmental entities have filed thousands of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and doctors, accusing them of flooding the nation with powerful opioid painkillers in order to generate billions of dollars in profits.
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter recently won a multi-million dollar judgment against Johnson& Johnson and its subsidiaries after a judge found that they had used“false and misleading” marketing to promote their drugs. Two other drug companies, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., agreed to pay the state $ 270 million and $ 85 million, respectively, to settle cases against them and their affiliates.
During the course of the trial, there was testimony that linked prescription opioids to more than 6,100 Oklahoma deaths from 2000-2017.
Several rally participants acknowledged there have been some abuses, but said there are also many people who need the pain relief that opioids offer and they don't want the public to lose sight of their needs.
“These people are the collateral damage of this so-called drug crisis,” said Suzy Stergas of Tonkawa, “These people are paying for what a few people have done that they shouldn't have done.”
Stergas said her 51-year-old husband has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since he was 23 years old and takes a prescription opioid, without which he would be unable to help care for his 85-year-old mother.
“Right now, yes, he is getting the medication he needs, but there are so many that are not because the doctors are scared to death of the DEA ( Drug Enforcement Administration),” she said.
Dr. Donald Kim, an Oklahoma City doctor who has practiced medicine for 22 years and pain management for 15 years, said doctors are being pressured to cut back or eliminate their patients' opioid prescriptions.
“Before 2010, the medical community was pushing to treat pain,” he said. “They literally opened the floodgates. Now they are reining it back more than they should. They are forcing us to taper patients off their pain medication... . That's one extreme to the other extreme. We need to find a balance.”
Dr. James Lynch, another Oklahoma City pain management doctor, said he hasn't lost a patient to a drug overdose since 2006, but he more recently lost a patient to suicide while trying to follow new guidelines and taper the patient off painkillers.
“He just wrote me a letter one day and said, `I know you're doing the best you can, ... but I just can't deal with this stuff anymore,'” Dr. Lynch said. “And then he just took his life.”
Alex Gerszewski, spokesman for Attorney General Hunter, said the attorney general is aware that there are chronic pain patients who need to continue to receive opioids.
“No one should be getting denied prescription opioids inconsistent with their doctor's medical decision regarding treatment ,” Gerszewski said. “The attorney general believes opioids are necessary and appropriate for shortterm acute pain after surgery, palliative care and individuals suffering from chronic pain, when no other options f or treatment exist.”
“The lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson held the main culprit behind the opioid epidemic accountable for addiction and overdose deaths caused by the company's decades of fraudulent marketing,” Gerszewski said.