After the government in the mid-1980s legitimized high dose prescription of medicine based on the poppy plant - the supplier of pain relief for thousands of years - opioids flooded local communities, not just doctors’ offices.

Families and police complained about pain pill addictions and found an easy scapegoat for the travails of struggling neighborhoods. The Drug Enforcement Administration found a goldmine of good press, too, going after "pill mill" doctors who honestly were merely doing their job - relieving suffering patients as best they could.

The DEA unleashed its dogs, caging eminent physicians as "drug kingpins", and forcing patients to divert to even more dangerous non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prescriptions. For purer, poppy plant-based relief, too many patients have had to buy illegally on the streets - whose dealers sometimes tainted their drugs with dangerous ingredients like fentanyl.

Lauren Deluca, one of these pain patients (that makeup to 20% of the population), has found the Affordable Care Act exposed each of these pain patients into experiments without Informed Consent. Freeing doctors to practice medicine - unhindered by politics - is critical to the relief we deserve should pain ravage our lives.