Feb 24, 2016 4 min read

The opioid epidemic in this country deserves all the attention it is getting, and more, from our elected officials at every level of government, so we’re a bit perplexed about why President Obama displayed such a dismissive attitude toward a proposal from the National Governors Association to address the issue.

Members of the NGA had their annual meeting with the president earlier this week and presented the president with a well-crafted, bipartisan plan to confront the opioid problem. The president was hardly supportive.

“If we go to doctors right now and say, ‘Don’t overprescribe,’ without providing some mechanism for people in these communities to deal with the pain they have or the issues that they have, then we’re not going to solve the problem, because the pain is real, the mental illness is real,” the president said, according to a report on Yahoo News. “In some cases, addiction is already there.”

That response is puzzling to us on several levels. First, it’s about time someone compels the doctors who are not taking proper care with their prescriptions to rein in their dispensing of these powerful, potentially deadly drugs. Second, while opioids may be the only way to provide relief to some patients, there exist many other options for dealing with pain in most cases. One would be broader access to medical marijuana, an issue that Pennsylvania’s lawmakers thus far have refused to adequately address, for which they should be ashamed. Third, just because some already are addicted to opioids is no reason to refuse to crack down on the prescribing of these drugs. Those who are addicted should be shepherded into treatment, and that treatment should be made more accessible. The goal here should be to prevent more people from becoming addicts and perhaps dying from their addictions.

Yahoo News cites figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that show nearly 50,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2014, with about 61 percent of the deaths attributed to powerful prescription painkillers and heroin. And, as we know from story after story from victims of the heroin epidemic, many of them had been on the “oxy-type” painkillers, and when those either lost their effectiveness or became too expensive, they turned to heroin.

One has to wonder how careful some doctors are about putting these drugs into circulation. The CDC said, “Health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers in 2012, enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills.”

The nation’s governors are not acting alone. Their proposal was issued in concert with concerned physicians, including Dr. Patrice A. Harris, chairwoman-elect of the American Medical Association.

Among their suggestions:

• Better and greater use of drug-monitoring databases

• Improved education about pain management that would begin in medical schools and continue throughout doctors’ careers

• Prioritized treatment for those who have become addicted to prescription drugs

• Continued promotion of overdose-prevention and education programs, and increased access to naloxone, which has been used to great effect to reverse heroin overdoses

“Prescribers have primary responsibility for ensuring patients understand that misuse of opioids can result in addiction, overdose and death,” the NGA said in its report. “It is time to put an end to this epidemic’s hold on our country. Many states have already taken steps, and many physicians and medical societies have partnered in these efforts. But collectively, we must do more. We must demonstrate the leadership it takes to make meaningful changes that will have a lasting impact. Not only is it our job, as governors and physicians, but also our responsibility to the American people.”

We wish the president had not brushed off the governors so abruptly, and had heeded their call to “demonstrate leadership.” Their proposals deserve further consideration, and action.