Surveys tied to patient satisfaction incentivizing doctors to prescribe opioids.

This makes sense.

In the last 3 years, doctors have sent someone in my family home with opiods no fewer than a dozen times. Prior to surgery, it's prescribed before there is even a complaint of pain. There is the presumption of pain. I fill the prescription so I'm not charted as a noncompliant patient and I don't use them. Members of my family have taken them when pain levels were high, but they know to stop as soon as they can. I say that the goal is not to be free of pain, but to bring it down from a 10.

Regardless of the incentives, it is the doctor's responsibility to warn patients of the dangers and they are absolutely not doing that!

I remember exactly where I was the day of the Columbine shooting. I was at the mall in Westminster, just a few miles away, pushing my two very small children around in a stroller. We stopped at a store where they were showing the news on a TV, and several people were gathered around watching, horrified.

Austin Eubanks' death is so tragic on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start. My heart goes out to his family and friends.

RIP, Young Man.