As an RN, nursing instructor, and nurse practitioner student working on my second master's degree, this has gone too far. I am also a chronic pain patient with a spinal cord injury. The worst is seeing others have their practitioners completely abandon them, or taper their doses without their permission. This is patient abandonment. This is inhumane and essentially euthanizing people who have been on these medications for years to decades. After categorizing certain drugs to Schedule II, this meant that monthly visits were required. Now, elderly and severely disabled are unable to go each month to not only the physicians office, but also the pharmacy. Not to mention the price of going each month rather than every 3 months. You have essentially created a crisis for chronic pain patients. You have punished the innocent, taken away their autonomy, enlisted a stigma that can never be erased due to the overreaction you created in the US. Now, pain doctors are telling patients to choose between their pain medication and their anxiety medications--a realm that pain specialists are not educated about and do not specialize in. Now, patients are committing suicide, some just right outside of their physician's offices. It has gone too far. It is inhumane to allow suffering. Practitioners are abandoning patients. The government has prevented nothing, only caused further harm to those that follow the guidelines and laws, patients and practitioners included. You are essentially euthanizing some of these people who rely on these medications to live.

This has went way to far,,,politicians need to stay out of our doctors office & our prescriptions. Who made them God! I’ve been a Chronic Pain patient for 30 years,,never abused my medications, passed all bs piss tests and have had my medications cut by 60%. Now I have no life out of my bed. Since this so called National crisis on pain medications the CDC guidelines have hurt so,,,many of my fellow pain friends , leaving them a life of pure HELL. Stop this labeling and give us our life’s back!

I am writing you with big concerns on the legislature to label opioids for no chronic pain conditions. This is wrong and there are many of us suffering already caught in the middle of this crisis... those legal law abiding citizens that are now treated like criminals just because we take opioids for chronic pain conditions. We already have recurring urine drug tests, pill counts, and monthly expensive visits to doctors sometimes hours away from our home. The FDA labeling act will remove the access of pain medication from millions of disabled and chronic pain Patients. Please speak out for those of us who can’t. I am a real person and have no affiliations but need help. I have been on pain medication for decades due to chronic pain. Those meds have allowed me to continue working and supporting my family. I follow every rule and law and should not be punished for no other reason than to control medication from Congress. Please let the doctors and patients make the decision on what is needed and to whom. Stop punishing pain patients!!!

Stop punishing people who are in pain. We are not the criminals here.

The draconian stipulation to discontinue opiate pain medication for chronic pain patients is BARBARIC. A kneejerk reaction to the opiate crisis is hysteria, throwing 100 million chronic pain patients into pain so severe to cause medical collapse, heart failure, and suicides. The veteran administration's policy to discontinue opiate pain medication has resulted in significant increase in suicides. This policy is inhumane, counterproductive, and cruel.

I am not a chronic pain patient, at least, not yet. I am a nurse who takes care of people with all kinds of pain, including long term pain. Personally, I just don't even see the point of this bill.

Absolutely NOT! Government needs to get out of my doctor's office and let doctors do their jobs!

Please don't vote for any more measures/laws that will put more obstacles in the way of chronic pain patients. We're already burdened with government over reach when it comes to getting treatment, including medications. Leave our medical care in the hands of highly trained doctors, no one else. Chronic pain patients are suffering by the millions already, please don't keep exacerbating this cruel unnecessary situation. Further tying the hands of physicians will NOT help the illegal fentanyl and heroin problem that we're seeing with addicts. Stop conflating the illicit drug problem with legitimate patients needing legitimate care/treatment from legitimate doctors. It's so wrong and very sad...

Yes please vote NO I have concerns on this bill it going to hurt us poor pain patients that have did it right for years please don't hurt us for the wrong that other who does not I have had 4 back surgery 2 shoulder and 1foot surgery and now they just told me my neck is needing it and I no countless other that in the same shape as me and this is going to hurt them just as well so please please vote No on this bill I pray for you every day for leadership for us and the country thank you for your service

Having been on every pain med possiable, what good is going to become of this?? Honest hard working people that pay yoyr salary are on these meds. Not your drug addicts.. We have suffered enough. You are 1 slip on ice away from being us.. Think on this please.. This is out of control. Let our Drs treat us, NOT THE Goverment..

This Bill would further harm Intractable Pain Patients. We can’t let this bill pass..

There is never going to be a one size, fits all solution to this issue. So please stop trying to make one. Before I got sick and I could push through anything... I never took anything stronger than Tylenol. And I was definitely of the mindset that while there were times and reasons to have a need for pain medication, I never once thought that there’d be a reason to need such medications on a day basis. Welp... I was wrong... so so wrong. Being on the other side of things has absolutely changed my outlook. I have two young children and while this may be the most awful thing for a mother to ever say... if I were to lose access to the medications I take, I don’t know that I could continue living this life. It doesn’t fix everything, but it greatly improves the quality of my life and allows me to be more present in their lives. Right now in Utah, there are billboards about the Opioid Epidemic everywhere. The one that really affects me is the one with the picture of a male heroin abuser/addict and Stepford housewife beside him and the lovely caption that says there’s no difference between the two. So... you’re saying that I, who’s never even gotten a parking ticket, that I’m no better than a drug addict? If I’m being honest, had I not be in the situation I’m in now, I would have probably bought into the propaganda. And that is what is wrong here. The CDC made RECOMMENDED GUIDELINES and yet so many doctors, clinics and pharmacies are choosing to or being forced to practice them as though they were law. The fear mongering to the general public, to those not affected by these guidelines, bills and laws have so much influence that people who don’t know really anything about this issue are making decisions based on what YOU are telling them to think and not on what is factual data or any sort of professional medical knowledge. I think that all these doctors that have been treating all these patients they way they have been for years may know what their patients best needs are. In this situation I believe these decisions should stay between the doctor and the patient. If a doctor treats you, in anyway, they do so knowing that the decisions the make will have consequences, good or bad. And so they treat you in the way they best feel would be optimal to you while ensuring there is the least amount of risk to your health and their license. They aren’t telling you how to do your job, please stop telling them how to do theirs.

Stop punishing the CPP community, those of us that have illnesses and/or injuries that don’t allow us to function without our medications!! Everyone is one incident or one illness from becoming just like us. I guarantee none of take our medications because we like too, or because we like to spend the money each month.

Because I do not believe the Government would even know what label to put on a drug. Each pain medication is used for several types of pain. Not just one type of pain. More infringement on our rights as CPP.

Absolutely no!!! I have been a chronic pain patient for 13 yrs. I have to visit my dr every month for that many years at $300.00 per visit + $175.00 for my drug screens every month + I have to be on call 5 days a week for random pill counts that no matter where I am at or what I am doing I have to come in to be counted at their beckon call! I feel like I am a convict or prisoner! I have never missed appointments nor have I ever failed a drug screen! I was forcibly tapered against my will which has since then practically made me bed ridden! I have not seen my mother (who is 81) in almost 5 yrs because the drive is dibilitating!!! I do not have enough medicine to make the 2000 mile roundtrip! Now they want to slap another stipulation onto us! When is the madness ever going to stop? In the 13 yrs I have lived with the Frankenstein back that I have I have nor will I ever overdose! After 13 yrs if I were to be an addict I would have became one way before now so nope not addicted either and the government wants to make it harder for us but easier on addicts? As a Christian mother of 7 and wife of 36 yrs I beg of you please stop the insanity for true honest hard working red white and blue voters who happen to also be Chronic Pain Patients please please protect us!!!!!! Thank you

The passage of this bill will make it almost impossible for patients who live with diseases that have a pain component or with chronic pain from trauma to receive the medications that allow them to a a semblance of a quality of life. Please vote nay.

The Government interfered “to save my life “ all they’ve done is start to kill me slowly everyday!

How do laypeople like these politicians think they have more insight into regulation of medication than the experts the the Food and Drug Administration who approved these medications for the very purpose of what this bill is attempting to undermine and destroy? Further, how could anyone be so deceived into thinking that changing labeling on a few pain pills is going to deter heroin and illicit fentanyl users? Following this line of reasoning behind this bill also leads to government taking away your firearms and who knows what other freedoms such narrow minded delusive legislation will follow this act. No antibiotics? No anxiety medications? With such government, who needs enemies?