Starting around 2010 or 2011, events converged in ways that made prescription pills less widely available. Law enforcement cracked down on pill mills, the maker of Oxycontin made the pill harder to crush, physicians tightened their prescribing practices, and more states created prescription registries to help identify people who were obtaining prescriptions by “doctor shopping”—that is, by seeking prescriptions from multiple physicians at the same time.

While this initial response was necessary to clamp down on unethical prescribing, it metastasized into a broader campaign against medical opioid use more generally, in which legitimate patients who needed pain control were denied access to medicine and their physicians were prosecuted and often convicted for drug trafficking. It’s an approach that unfairly penalizes upstanding doctors, disrupts patient care, and raises concerns for public health: many people have been left to languish in pain so severe they take their own lives or overdose after turning to street drugs like heroin.

The ongoing anti-opioid campaign has blurred the line between responsible medical practice and illegal activity, with laws like the Controlled Substances Act, meant to combat drug trafficking, being punitively applied to clinicians. On this episode of facts and fallacies, author and medical malpractice attorney Ron Chapman joins Cameron English to discuss how we can restore the balance between accountability and compassion, protecting the public from bad actors while providing appropriate medical care to patients who need it.

Ron Chapman is a federal criminal defense attorney and author of the book Truth and Persuasion. Visit his Substack and follow him on X @RonChapmanAtty.

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish