A good prescription for kids in pain
Regarding the Aug. 21 editorial “The heroin emergency”:
Seriously ill children who are in significant pain should have access to all possibly effective prescription painkillers, and their doctors should have information about dosage, scheduling and toxicities of those painkillers. The recent Food and Drug Administration decision to approve OxyContin for children as young as 11 does just that — it gives their doctors better information on how to treat their pain.
Drug abuse prevention is critically important. However, suggesting that seriously ill children for whom OxyContin is an appropriate treatment should instead suffer so that potential drug abusers are not harmed is not a fair or reasonable policy solution.
Nancy Goodman, Washington
The writer is executive director of Kids v. Cancer