[refurb]

If you've been around long enough you'd realize we're come full circle. Prior to the 1990's pain meds were very rarely handed out.

Then a few things happened: (1) more data was collected that suggested when used for severe pain, the addiction potential was low, (2) adequately controlled pain leads to quicker recovery times and (3) there was a lot of untreated pain at the time.

As a result, opioid use when way up. One could argue it went to far with very strong opioids being given for mild or moderate pain.

The sad thing is that we're already seeing doctors get more stingy with opioids. My guess is we'll swing too far in the other direction and in a decade we'll have people with severe, incurable cancer pain being told "you don't need opioids".