In a 4,000-word feature, the Washington Post spotlights the “unintended consequences” of the opioid epidemic on legitimate patients who require pain medication. “After decades of explosive growth, the annual volume of prescription opioids shrank 29 percent between 2011 and 2017, even as the number of overdose deaths has climbed ever higher, according to the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science,” but the correction and tightening of CDC guidelines “has been so rapid, and so excruciating for some patients, that a growing number of doctors, health experts and patient advocates are expressing alarm that the race to end one crisis may be inadvertently creating another.”

From the news release of the American Association for Justice.