Oh, I'm almost moved to tears. As a mother, I am so scared of my children ever getting into drugs. It's such a waste of life. But now, this pain patch which has been a Godsend to so many pain and cancer patients is going to be put in front of the firing squad. That makes me so angry.

Last month, my sister had back surgery, and as a result ended up with unbearable headaches that wouldn't go away. She was taking 1 Percocet 5 mg every 6 hours because that is what the script bottle said to. She was watching the clock tick tock by, just so she would know when she could take another pill. I told her that was absolutely ridiculous. I told her to double up every four hours, just so she could get up to walk to the bathroom. Then I told her to call her doc and get something stronger. Thank God, he put her on the Fentanyl patch, and in 2 days she was functional again. She couldn't rave enough about it, because it worked so amazingly. And this is definantly not a woman out to get a high. When she was diagnosed with cancer, and had surgery and radiation treatment, she refused to take pain meds, because she hated the loopy feeling.
It is tragic that young people (listen to me, the sage at 28) do these insanely stupid things, but that is nature. We pray that as many as possible make it through and learn so that they can teach next generation not to do stupid things. But they're going to demonize this medication, and there will be one less tool for the chronic pain or terminal patient to use to fight for a better quality of life.