In her article about patients' rights to adequate pain control, Patients must be told of right to pain care, agency says , The Oregonian, 7/13/99, Erin Hoover Barnett never mentions the reason that patients have been needlessly suffering pain for many years, namely, the relentless "War on Drugs" which has demonized narcotics in the US for 75 years and has produced a second "Prohibition Era." The irrational propaganda by federal and local law enforcement agencies has led to larger and larger budgets for the criminal justice bureaucracies and massive imprisonment of drug addicts and the creation of a vast criminal industry supplying contraband.
One side effect of the "War on Drugs," and the mistaken policy of addressing drug addiction as a criminal justice issue instead of a medical problem, is that both doctors and patients have been intimidated into an almost superstitious fear of addictive substances. Instead of learning how to control addiction and permit the appropriate use of these medications to control pain, as well as mental stress, doctors have retreated under the threat of police investigations.
In 30 column-inches, The Oregonian story never uses the words "narcotics," or "addiction." Instead, we read euphemistically about "pain relief." This omission reflects the taboo which stands between people suffering both physical and mental pain and the relief represented by narcotics. To some extent the taboo has become almost a religious belief that somehow it is more noble to endure the pain and discomfort than to obtain therapeutic relief, that the use of pain and stress-relieving drugs indicates a weakness of character.