LETTER – New regulations on opioid use jeopardize law-abiding citizens

Letter to the Editor Re: Opioid use in the province of B.C.

The recent decisions on opioid use in the Province of B.C. by the College of physicians and surgeons have been made with absolutely no provisions for law abiding citizens who live a life of unremitting pain.

There are issues affecting British Columbians at this moment that this government seems willing to overlook with complete lack of insight as to the consequences for many hundreds of patients under physician care.

Thanks to the new regulations, patients are locked out of travel and many in the prime of their retirement years. I have heard some at the BCMA make the statement that patients suffering debilitating pain conditions and on these meds have no business or need to travel as they wouldn’t be able to enjoy it anyway. They are correct that the opioid medications don’t end pain but they do make life endurable for patients who would otherwise be captive to their homes and beds. Are these medical professionals in their infinite wisdom and compassion suggesting that families, wives and children should strike off on their own and leave their loved ones behind?

Patients with incurable and chronic medical conditions have become social pariahs thanks to the BCMA and news media who constantly harp on the criminal and illicit seeking of opioids for self gratification. I understand parents, family, and society’s pain at the loss of individuals who’s lives become overrun by the bad choices they make but what about the choices being made now that affect the families of law abiding citizens? These patients in many cases have no choice, they are not the problem and did not create this epidemic so why should they be penalized along the way?

The new 30-day prescription limit on opioid medications means that many can not travel to the warm weather of the U.S. for snow bird winters. Sadly these patients can not even travel across their own country because there is no reciprocal agreement between provinces to fill prescriptions of this kind. Patients are now effectively prisoners in their own province locked out of all joy to make sure one group can be stopped from killing themselves.

On top of the prison sentence now handed to “patients” who already suffer so much they now have the added stress of physicians who are permitted to cherry pick their patients all so they may avoid dealing with issues surrounding opioid therapy. What happened to physician compassion or to advocating for a patient’s rights?

This issue is a deeply rooted one for me as it is for many others across this province. My family member is 70 years old and has been on low dose opioid therapy for severe incurable spinal cord injury he received over two decades ago. In all this time he has undergone every new painful therapy made available, attends every hospital checkup and physician review and he has never ever“lost” a dose.

He has until these recent changes been able to take his three-month supply to snow bird in the heat of the Arizona sun or travel to family across Canada. This last month he was advised that this little bit of joy he had left was gone because the BCMA had handcuffed his physician and pharmacist in their attempt to end the opioid crisis across our province.

These new rules all set in place to protect the criminals in our society are in my view an abuse of our civil, moral and human rights and it can not be allowed. Patients must have different rights under these laws than those who willingly break the law and put their health in jeopardy. I have to wonder how this government plans to manage this issue or will it be left up to patients and lawyers to demand what should be a human right for all.

CAROLYN KING

Kamloops