Dear Legislator:
My wife was in a traffic accident in 2003 and has lived with terrible pain every day. She is on painkillers and she is careful to just take as few as possible to get through the day. I have often seen her hold back tears because the painkillers are not strong enough. She is strong-willed and she is very careful to not take as much as she could, because she fears becoming dependent on the painkillers.
- In your haste to save a few dozen drug abusers, you have inflicted needless pain and suffering on many thousands Illinoisans.
She has been taking synthetic codeine at a relatively high dose for eleven years now, and has managed to not fall prey to overuse. She has terrible leg pain, and the doctors know her case well, and her use of the painkillers is well monitored by her doctors. It is very difficult to get her and the wheelchair out of the house. We try to schedule medical and dental visits to minimize the number of times we have to get her into the car to go out.
In posturing as anti-drug, you have passed a bill preventing our family physicians from prescribing her medicine.
Now, she has to go see a doctor far away so he can validate her need for her medicine. This is painful and very inconvenient. I do not understand why legitimate patients like my wife are being punished for the behavior of others.
Yes, we understand that the Legislature is trying to save the kids who abuse medicine. I get that you want to minimize the deaths of the few hundred people who overdose each year in our state.
- In saving a few dozen drug abusers, you have punished hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens who live with serious pain.
Please rewrite the law so that innocent people who need their medicine are not punished in your attempt to modify the behavior of the fools who abuse drugs.
The measure that was passed that went into effect this month is simplistic and will never achieve your goal of ridding our state of drug users. What you have done is make my wife more depressed by making her suffer more pain.
I fear there are at least a hundred thousand more like her, who are crying in pain every morning, every night. Every time you vote on medicine restrictions, please remember the many thousands of innocent people who are crying for pain, at that very moment, who count on you to, if not ease their suffering, to at least not make it worse?
The measure probably looked good for you legislators, so you can posture that you are hard on crime and drug use. How could you raise the bar for the most critically ill among us? Despite your good intent, you have imposed a painful sentence on the people who elected you to protect them.
- Please use your power to ease the pain of your constituents, not increase it. Please fix this law.
My wife, and the thousands of others who depend on opioid-based pain killers deserve better from our public servants.
Today You Can Make A Better Tomorrow 