COMPASSIONATE GOVERNMENT: Reader David Craig emails:

My wife suffers from chronic pain as a result of a serious back injury, and while surgery helped, she still requires daily narcotic pain medication to manage her pain. Because of prescription drug abuse, the states and DEA have been changing regulations almost monthly for narcotic medications. In the past we could fill her prescriptions at midnight of the day written on the prescription, but now they can only be filled during “business hours,” you know, cause pain apparently only happens 8-5 Monday through Friday. This morning a new paperwork regulation required the pharmacist to spend more than 30 minutes filling one prescription for my wife. The pharmacist was as frustrated as my wife and her doctor, and the pharmacist told me it’s only going to get worse with more regulations.

My wife is not the criminal. Colorado and the DEA are forcing her to live in pain as they restrict her legal access to pain relief. No one should have to watch the person they love suffer in unimaginable pain just because of bureaucratic hurdles put in place to slow illegal drug use.

I had to get that off my chest, and you were the only outlet that I had.