The Drug Enforcement Administration is shutting down pill mills across the country since the Centers for Disease Control issued new guidelines for pain medication this year.
According to the CDC, in 2012, doctors wrote 259 million opioid pain prescriptions, enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills. In 2013, the CDC said almost 2 million Americans were addicted to painkillers. Some 16,000 people lost their lives to that addiction.
The DEA has put pressure on doctors not to write prescriptions for pain pills and on pharmacists not to fill them.
According to Kaiser Health, DEA agents will visit pharmacists, confiscate pain pills, and insist that the pharmacy do criminal background checks on patients. Even so, pharmacists often have to turn away chronic pain patients. Pharmacies must dispense pain medications at the state average number. Any more than that, and the DEA pays the pharmacy a visit.
Even chronic pain patients with extraordinary problems can be turned away. In one Florida case, a man's spine was smashed like an accordion when a car fell on him. He can't walk but he does have feeling in his legs, mostly vicious, spiking, electrical-like pain. He often can't fill his prescription for narcotic painkillers.
Tranquilizers such as Valium and Ativan are also being restricted.
For the many pain patients over-the-counter medications might be the only thing available to them today.
