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          The opioid crisis has morphed into an epidemic and the numbers are rising, with anestimated68,630 deaths reported in 2021 according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse(NIDA). (Machikanti et al, 2012) blames the opioid crisis that has affected millions in America on the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)’s new categorization of pain as the 5thvital sign and their revised pain management standards of 2000.This has been further fueled by an increased awareness of the right to pain relief, the support of various organizations that support the use of opioids in large doses, and finally, aggressive marketing by the ever-greedy pharmaceutical industry has helped to fuel the opioid crisis that has emerged in recent times. The public has been misled to believe that opioids, when prescribed by a physician, do not pose any adverse effects and are a safe and effective way to treat pain.

             I work in a chronic care facility and our patients usually experience serious pain that accompanies their disease processes. They get numerous prescriptions, among them, opioid analgesics (OA) for management of pain. since pain cannot be measured objectively, we have to accept the subjective assessment that it is what the patient says it is, and so my patients get them in various forms, doses, brands, and quantities, as long as they claim they have pain and give it a number on the numeric scale. J.M, my patient, seems to be going through her OA at an alarming rate……..Continue