Since when do government bureaucrats, who don't know diddley about the very substances they are supposed to control, take the place of skilled physicians?

When you have a War on Drugs, is when. This crap's been going on for decades, and the very first time doctors were jacked up like this was when the first anti-drug laws were formulated nearly a century ago. The drug prohibitionists can't do anything about illicit drugs pouring through the country, so they attack a stationary and largely helpless target, namely pain specialist doctors. It's rank showboating and politicization, and it's leading to suicides of people suffering from intractable pain and unable to assuage it. But the DrugWarrior's eyes get big with faux innocence at being so accused and respond with hurt tones that they aren't causing this misery, oh no, they're just doing their jobs.

Doesn't that excuse sound familiar? (Godwin's Law is threatening to descend.) I've been laid up in hospital next to people with severe injuries who needed opiates for the pain and they never got them because the doctors are pee-their-pants scared that someone will report them to the DEA. Tylenol doesn't cut it when you've got cracked ribs and broken bones...or much worse, as these intractable pain patients must suffer with.