Writing at Pajamas Media, Dalrymple notes that prescriptions of opioids in the US has almost doubled in the last 18 years, and he says that opioid overdose represents a special danger for veterans. Why the increase?
Is it that doctors are ignorant of the dangers? I doubt it. Rather, they have before them patients who are suffering both physically and mentally, who say they are in pain, and for whom they, the doctors, naturally wish to do something; they have relatively little time in which to do it; and the patients communicate to them subliminally that they want strong drugs. Unwilling or unable to disoblige them, the doctors take the line of least resistance and prescribe what they think is being demanded of them.