Musings has previously written that political crusaders, including the President, are over-hyping the legitimate use of narcotic pain killers by chronic pain sufferers for their own political benefit.

This Fox News article makes the same point, probably far better than we ever could.

As a former hospice employee, I can testify to the truth of the idiocy of limiting or denying effective pain control for a person dying from bone or other cancers. Many times we had doctors want to report us for prescribing 25 or 50 milligram Fentanyl timed release patches to provide some level of pain control for a patient.

“You’re making addicts out of them!” they would bleat officiously.

Let’s get this straight. These people were DYING. Surely they had a right to die without pain.

Luckily the issue was much less political then than it is now, and so far as I know we never had to deny anyone pain control, but it was a hassle.

Now it’s just plain organized cruelty.

The ads on TV say “Just one is too many”, intimating that you should never take anything stronger than aspirin.

As bad as it sounds, we truly wish some overwhelming chronic pain condition to befall these crusaders and for them to be denied any effective pain management.

Are opioids abused? Are there addicts who include prescription opioids in their stash? Sure. But the chronic use of opioid pain killers for chronic pain is not abuse. It is survival.

Some doctors actually believe in not ever prescribing pain killers, mostly, as the doctor in the article says, because they fear being arrested and losing their practice.

We’ve noticed that if there is one thing people are short of in this day and age, it’s common sense.

Read the article, which is one of a three-part series. You owe it to yourself and the rest of us.

The next time you read or hear of someone who commits suicide to escape pain, know this.

That person was murdered, just as surely as if someone had walked up to them on the street and shot them.