Yet another reason to end the war on drugs

No Relief in Sight

Clinicians and researchers have long remarked on the link between
opiophobia and undertreatment of pain. In a 1966 pharmacology textbook, the
psychiatrist Jerome H. Jaffe, who later became Richard Nixon's drug czar, noted
that patients who take narcotics long enough develop tolerance (a need for
larger doses to achieve the same effect) and physical dependence (resulting in
withdrawal symptoms). But he cautioned that "such considerations should not in
any way prevent the physician from fulfilling his primary obligation to ease the
patient's discomfort. The physician should not wait until the pain becomes
agonizing; no patient should ever wish for death because of his physician's
reluctance to use adequate amounts of potent narcotics."

It's been going on a long time and should end now.