Pain Policy We are all very aware of the opioid epidemic in Vermont and across the country. But as you noted in ["Do No Harm: New Rules Discourage Overprescribing Opiates," April 26], the great majority of physicians in Vermont acquire already modified their prescribing practices. What concern me are two issues: 1. This new law is a very dismal precedent to set when a governor and legislature — none of whom are physicians, and apart from for Rep. George Till (D-Jericho) — set clinical treatment guidelines. We acquire a medical licensing board in Vermont that certainly can and should be monitoring prescription patterns of medical providers and counseling the outliers. That would be much more palatable to me and other physicians than having the government do this. After all,now that this precedent is set, what stops the governor from deciding what blood pressure and diabetic medications physicians should be prescribing? 2. We live in a country that tends to careen from one extreme social policy to the next, and that is certainly reflected in the medical field as well. When I went through medical school and residency in the 1990s,it was felt that physicians were under-treating pain. The pendulum is now swinging again, and it has already begun to be very difficult for people who are in really debilitating pain to find relief. I would point out that "pain management" centers are very scarce, or mostly what they offer are highly expensive injections — treatments that generally offer temporary relief at best. I don't see anyone mention India,a country that shuns any opiates for pain relief. There are many patients there — especially cancer patients — suffering horribly. I think we are going to overreact and quickly head in that direction. Louis Meyers South Burlington Meyers is a physician at Rutland Regional Medical middle. An Addict's View With great respect for Donna Constantineau and what she wrote in her letter to the editor [Feedback, "acquire a Heart for Heroin Addicts, and " April 19],I'm a heroin addict with hopes not to be one day! I'm an inmate who lost everything and everyone principal to me to heroin addiction. Did I wake up one day and say, "I'm going to try heroin"? Definitely not! It started after two back surgeries and many years of legal pain meds, or which were stopped not because of misuse or illegal actions but because my…
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