Thank you, Kindy Lemmon, for your articulate, timely plea for sufferers of chronic pain, specifically CRPS/RSD ("Chronic pain sufferers need access to opioids," Sept. 14). I, too, suffer intensely from this cruel disease and have done so for the last 31 years. I find governmental actions to be punishing legitimate patients enormously more than preventing accidental deaths. Ms. Lemmon, I and untold thousands of others desperately need these medications. If they are denied to us, government pencil-pushers will start recording far greater numbers of suicides of those who simply can't bear the unallayed pain. Plug those numbers in to your statistics.

I also find it repugnant that Drug Enforcement Administration officers can now intrude any database containing those who receive opioid prescriptions without warrants. Not only does our government continue to unconscionably force us to suffer, they are trampling the civil rights of untold millions of citizens. This is utterly unacceptable.

Sue Pehrson

Salt Lake City