A severe and growing shortage of physicians willing to prescribe morphine and related opioid analgesics

There is a Pain Crisis in America. Its primary manifestation is the routine and widespread under-treatment of pain, especially chronic, non-cancer pain. Other manifestations include a severe and growing shortage of physicians willing to prescribe morphine and related opioid analgesics, the widespread use of more toxic and less efficacious classes of medications in an effort to avoid opioids, and the profound distortion of medical education and of the doctor-patient relationship.