The government has been cracking down on the misuse of opioids, but the restrictions have gone too far, hurting ordinary Americans who need them. Approximately one quarter of the nation’s population suffers from pain. The latest assault, causing problems for those suffering, which includes many elderly people, is the Biden DOJ’s lawsuits against the pharmacies CVS and Walgreens for prescribing them.

This has resulted in repeatedly denying those in pain the prescriptions their doctors wrote, forcing them to try to convince pharmacists who know nothing about their conditions that they’re not criminals, but patients in need of relief.

The DOJ launched its nationwide case against CVS about a year ago. Today, we’re no closer to a resolution. The lawsuit alleged that CVS “knowingly filled prescriptions for controlled substances,” a dramatic headline that masks something much simpler, instead portraying it as far more dangerous. What the DOJ really believes is that pharmacists should second-guess doctors, interrogate patients and override the medical judgment of licensed doctors who have actually examined the people they’re treating.

CVS responded in its defense that standards for rejecting prescriptions are “vague, undefined, and ever-changing standards of practice,” that all filled scripts were from government-licensed prescribers for FDA-approved drugs and that they've led industry efforts against misuse, such as by blocking over 1,250 suspicious prescribers. 

The DEA published a policy statement in the Federal Register in 2006 admitting that “one cannot provide an exhaustive and foolproof list of ‘dos and........

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