Clearly, the "mission" is to take all chronic pain patients off pain managing opioids and put them on Suboxone or Methadone, both opioids.  As is, our modern medical system is killing chronic pain patients by tapering or denying them opioids to manage pain, but addicts get to take high dosages of the addiction maintenance opioids.  Yep, take them from folks in pain and pile them onto those who abused opioids.  What could possibly go wrong?  Clue, most chronic pain patients have been searching for and using alternative treatments long before these puritans thought that nonsense up.  I have spent years trying alternatives, they either didn't work for pain, or made me very, very sick.   ( I have an autoimmune disease with chemical sensitivities, not someone who should be serving as a lab rat in your "experiments" ). I have had steroid injections, nerve ablations, cold laser, physical therapy ( I did yoga before they took the meds away, can't do it now) and countless other alternative treatments, I took opioids for years without a problem but because of the actions of addicts, I have to suffer.  Chronic pain patients are the collateral damage in this new war on drugs.  Torturing chronic pain patients will not "stem the tide of opioid overdoses."  We aren't the ones overdosing, that would be the street addicts dying now in record numbers from heroin and illicit Fentanyl from overseas. There is the problem, fix them and leave law-abiding pain patients alone to work with their doctors and take what works for them.  The man in the article was an addict but only about 1% of pain patients go on to become addicts.  You might educate yourself about the difference between addiction and medical dependence.  For the vast majority of chronic pain patients, pain meds allow for far more active lives, not flop about stoned on a couch, but out being part of the world or caring for our families and doing things we love.  We take pain opioids to have lives, not escape life.  Unmanaged chronic pain causes brain damage and dementia, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, etc.  But hey, feel free to play with our lives in a misguided effort to stop street drugs, while junkies die anyway.  Way to save us all from demon opioids, how proud you must be.