Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

by Sam Quinones

Doctors and medical associations, however, were worried. Prescribing these drugs might lead to addiction. They demanded legal clarity. So, beginning with California, states passed laws exempting doctors from prosecution if they prescribed opiates for pain within the practice of responsible health care. Numerous states approved so-called intractable pain regulations: Ohio, Oregon, Washington, and others. Soon what can only be described as a revolution in medical thought and practice was under way. Doctors were urged to begin attending to the country’s pain epidemic by prescribing these drugs. Interns and residents were taught that these drugs were now not addictive, that doctors thus had a mission, a duty, to use them. In some hospitals, doctors were told they could be sued if they did not treat pain aggressively, which meant with opiates.