Your Aug. 2 editorial “Highway to heroin” was poignant and important, but lacked critical context to solving the opioid crisis.

The problem of opioid addiction is not just about an over-reliance on painkillers; it has a lot to do with the outsized problem of chronic pain, reported by the National Academies of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine to be the No. 1 public health problem in the country. 

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The Institute of Medicine reports that more than 100 million Americans live with some level of chronic pain. Most of these people do not need prescription opioids long-term, but a minority have no other option to control their unrelenting pain. They are not the source of the problem, but they often are made to be scapegoats.

Scapegoating even affects the 75 percent of cancer patients and 33 percent of cancer survivors who have significant pain. Most of these people are prescribed an opioid at some time. Sadly, many die in severe pain. They become unintended victims of efforts to curb the opioid crisis by making their legally prescribed medications harder to get, even as they are dying.

To reduce supply, health insurers must cover effective alternative therapies. Treatment for mental health disorders must be widely available and affordable. This includes education, particularly for medical students and the broader public, and treatment for addiction, which should be stripped of stigma and criminalization and treated as the disease it is.

The Blade is correct that to make a difference, there needs to be a “fundamental cultural shift.” But it must be about how we treat people with chronic pain, not just rethinking how we use opioids.

LYNN WEBSTER

Salt Lake City

Editor’s note: The writer is vice president of scientific affairs of PRA Health Sciences, a drug research organization, and past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

First Published August 11, 2015, 4:00 a.m.