Opioid tax unfair to chronic pain patients
Fentanyl Citrate, a CLASS II Controlled Substance as classified by the Drug Enforcement Agency. Credit: Denver Post via Getty Images / Joe Amon
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s opioid tax will place an unjust and discriminatory burden on chronic-pain patients [“Legislators, Cuomo beat budget deadline,” News, March 31].
Many of these people already receive Medicare, Medicaid, workers comp and Social Security disability payments because of lost careers and lives, the result of debilitating injuries that cause chronic pain.
Their pain cannot be effectively relieved by natural healing, alternative treatments or traditional interventions. Quite fortunately, under a qualified doctor’s supervision and strict adherence to instructions, opioids can often treat chronic pain, like that from complex regional pain syndrome, that is otherwise unmanageable.
Unfortunately, the “opioid crisis” is just too easy a target for frothing politicians who have taken little time to understand the basic facts. They just want a visible political win.
We have a fentanyl and heroin epidemic, not an opioid epidemic. Ironically and sadly, policymakers are attacking drug manufacturers and physicians — and ultimately undertreating people — rather than dealing with the real and more difficult problem of curtailing illicit opioid drug trade, use and treatment.
Legitimate chronic-pain patients should not be burdened by this opioid tax.
Stacey Udell, Melville
Editor’s note: The writer has been a chronic-pain patient since 2012.
