Red Lawhern is a fantastic patient advocate, a fantastic writer and speaker, and a wellspring of knowledge and faithful support of pain patients over many years. I will have more of his credentials on the News page as we go forward.

I have known Red as long as I’ve been active in the fight to restore pain management. We actually met in person at a Washington DC conference in 2018, I think, where we were both speakers at the DHHS Pain Management Task Force meeting.  We have always had a different opinion, but we respect each other’s view, and both believe that all views and approaches are important so that hopefully someday one approach will succeed in restoring pain management. Obviously each of us believes “our” approach is the “one”.

So what are we doing?  We are going to have a debate!  How did this come to be, you might ask.

Well, on Saturday, July 29, I responded to a LinkedIn post by Dora Winters in which she brought up the CDC guidelines in presenting an article. I respond with my usual comment of “stop chasing the rabbit and get on board what will end the attacks—repealing the Controlled Substance Act (CSA)”.  In just a few minutes, Red came on board with his comment that what I propose is impossible. We went back and forth a bit, and then I simply put it out there.

“Red, I challenge you to a debate—How to End the War on Opioids. Are you game?”

And he replied that he was. And so we started working on a Facebook Live format to hold our debate.

Red contributes the following introduction to our debate:

“Patients in pain are regularly being denied effective treatment due to profoundly wrong US and State government policies that are driving clinicians out of pain medicine and patients into the streets.  Doctor Linda Cheek and patient advocate Red Lawhern come together to debate the question:

“Which approach to changing public health policy has the greatest likelihood of changing the public conversation and stopping the exodus of pain management doctors out of practice?

1. Advocacy for repeal of the Controlled Substances Act and abolishment of the US Drug Enforcement Administration?

or

1. Advocacy to discredit the US Centers for Disease Control with legislators,  forcing public repudiation of CDC opioid guidelines and removal of CDC from all roles in policy making for regulation of pain medicine? “

 

After the debate there will be an open Q&A for all participants. So I invite you to join us live on Facebook Live Wednesday, August 9 at 3:00 PM ET.  There will be an event scheduled on FB live tomorrow, Friday, Aug 4.  You can go on my Facebook page, sign up and you will receive reminders before the event.  Hope to see you there.