Why President Obama's $1.1 Billion Initiative to Combat Opioid Addiction Is Doomed
Chronic pain expert Cindy Perlin says Obama plan ignores the source of the problem
ALBANY, N.Y., Feb. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Recently, President Barack Obama announced his intention to add $1.1 billion to the 2017 budget to counteract the insidious opioid addiction and overdose epidemic that has touched virtually every community in the United States, tragically and needlessly cutting countless highly promising lives short.
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While some might welcome Obama's attention to the abuse of prescription painkillers and heroin, Cindy Perlin, author of The Truth About Chronic Pain Treatments: The Best and Worst Strategies for Becoming Pain Free, is unimpressed. She says, "The president's initiative, like most proposed by the mainstream medical community and other politicians, is doomed to failure because it is akin to closing the barn door after the horses have already escaped."
A pain treatment expert, chronic pain survivor and licensed social worker, Perlin says that while we need more access to drug treatment and prescription drug monitoring programs, they are not enough. What is needed, she insists, is to cut off the problem at its source by discouraging physicians from writing unnecessary prescriptions for opioids. It is now well documented, says Perlin, that most opioid addicts started as pain patients.
Perlin is frustrated that better pain relief options are being ignored. "The mainstream medical community insists that the 100 million-plus pain patients in the U.S. deserve treatment, which is true. But then they act as if the only treatment for pain is opioids and that reducing access to opioids would result in under treatment of pain. This does not have to be the case. There are thousands of studies showing that non-pharmaceutical treatments are safe and effective for chronic pain. These treatments include chiropractic, physical therapy, psychotherapy, biofeedback, acupuncture, nutritional and herbal therapies, exercise programs and many others," she says.
Unfortunately, barriers exist to their utilization that legislation is needed to remove. These include a lack of physician education about their effectiveness and insurance coverage limitations that put such treatments beyond some patients' reach.
Perlin has been a guest on multiple TV and radio networks, among them PBS, SiriusXm, and RadioMD. Her op-ed pieces and letters have been published in the Albany Times Union, New York Times and Wall Street Journal and she has contributed columns to OpEdNews.com, PainNewsNetwork.org and NaturalNews.com. More information can be found at www.cindyperlin.com.
AVAILABILITY: Albany, nationwide by arrangement and via telephone
CONTACT: Cindy Perlin, 518-439-6431; Email
SOURCE Cindy Perlin
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