Oregon opioid task force passes tapering guidelines

Oregon opioid task force passes tapering guidelines – Portland Business Journal – By Elizabeth Hayes – Staff Reporter, Portland Business Journal – Oct 25, 2019, 5:26pm EDT

A statewide task force on Friday passed new guidelines to assist doctors with how to safely taper patients off of high doses of opioids.

They did this unannounced on a Friday afternoon, those sneaky weasels!

The nonbinding recommendations were developed by the 26-member Oregon Opioid Tapering Task Force over the past few months.

Yet I haven’t seen any warning that this was happening. By acting at the last minute of the workweek, they managed to sneak this past what would normally be loud protests if people know the decision was close. 

“Before the development of these guidelines, there were few resources and evidence related to tapering that clinicians could look to for guidance,” Dr. Dana Hargunani, the Oregon Health Authority’s chief medical officer, said in a written statement.

Already, OHA’s efforts to address the opioid epidemic have helped lead to a 52 percent drop in prescription opioid-related deaths since 2005 and 29 percent decrease in opioid prescription fills since 2015, according to OHA.

Some patient advocates expressed concerns the tapering recommendations could be taken too far by doctors, who might try to get even patients who are stable off their painkillers.

The guidelines say that not all patients need to be tapered, especially if they’re experiencing a good quality of life and no side effects.

“I think the most important message we’re trying to get across is tapering opioids for a patient is a really individual thing,” Dr. David Labby, a task force member, has said. “This is not a cookie-cutter approach. There isn’t a magic formula in these guidelines.”

I normally assume that even people doing things I don’t like are just doing what they believe is best. I can forgive ignorance (to a point).

But this kind of sneaky maneuvering shows their true colors: they are doing their best to enact policies they know are not wanted by many citizens, policies they know will result in much suffering and agony.

If they believed they were actually correct to do this, they wouldn’t have to be so sneaky about it, so this is an admission of guilt.

I’m absolutely disgusted and appalled at this conduct of our supposed “public servants”… even more because I can’t do a damn thing about it.