The pain management part, if you have enough pain to warrant use of opiate painkillers, several times a day, long term, then it is safer to switch to something like MS Contin or Oxycontin.codiene & hydrocodone are meant for moderate-severe acute pain (pain lasting 6 weeks or less), and if you need to take several vicodins a day longer than that, you can get better relief, with less pills from a long-lasting medicine. Once your pain starts it takes more medicine to stop it. A low constant dose or morphine can help people much more efficiently than hydrocodone which only lasts 4-6 hours with or without tylenol. If you are truly suffering from chronic pain there is not more risk of addiction from one opiate to another. And once you’ve become opiate tolerant from vicodins the side effects are minor when moving to a different opiate. It’s not like vicodin is this amazing miracle painkiller but morphine is this awful dangerous medicine.

In this day and age, the prescriptions we receive are so readily available and not so illegally to obtain it’s worse than any other drug/alcohol / tobacco or other things that give you that high.

From what i remember if you were to be able to legitimately obtain Hydrocodone in it’s purest form it would come with inherent ill side effects. I am sure the FDA has shown excessive damage to the internal organs due to the testing that was conducted. Also it would create another issue. That being that it would only be a matter of time before some “Home Chemist” discovers how to create a new, bigger, better, cheaper high. I think it would show an utter lack of responsibility on society as a whole to let another “Methamphetamine” come out of the wood work.

Quite simply put there is too much risk involved and not to mention to many current issues at stake. Opiates are the new cocaine, weed, lsd, and everything else the world over has been addicted to only now you only need a prescription, or you could steal it. Trust me i know several people have stolen it, will steal it, will continue by any means to get their next bottle by any means.

There have been many studies on the purifications of Opiates and the benefits vs the possible side effects. In the balance are people’s lives. To which point the FDA makes their rules on what can or cannot be made and distributed legally is entirely what they are intrusted to do.
I understand your argument and it does show your intelligence and i agree with your many very well stated points. However the potential for something seriously dangerous to come of it would just bring those who can’t just stop taking the pills once their prescription is over is too big of risk.

There is another potential risk of purifying opiets in that it would just as easy to get your hands on it as it is to get your hands on a bag of weed. To the point the scum of society has brought us all down to their level. If we need something for pain we have to take the preverbial horse with a bad leg. Tougher laws will not change anything.

On a side note i would say someone very close to me worked for a pharmacy and they stole a bottle(s) of 1400 tablets of Vicodin (the name brand stuff). That person has an addiction, however their common sense was overidden by their compulsion to get that feeling that most opiets create. I can only imagine the issues at hand that he/she and I would have to endure due to their lack of judgement if Vicodin was a pure form.

I have listed a study that was done by the FAA back a few years ago. It does make a few valid points.

hydrocodine should only be distributed in small does and the patient should NEVER be given a refill without another doctor’s prescription. HC is one of the most addicting substances in the legal drug market today and it doesn’t need to be sold to anyone in it’s pure form, that’s why they put it in with other things, so people CAN’T take alot of it.

if they really have a chronic problem, they should be seeing their doctor on a regular basis anyways.. yes it would be helpful for a small few, but many more than the ones in pain would take advantage of it and it would be hard to keep the two apart.