The Passage of CARA: Implications for Patients With Cancer Pain

On July 22, 2016, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law that could have the potential to impact our practice. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) is aimed at curbing the national opioid epidemic, a troubling phenomenon leading to increased deaths from drug overdoses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that almost 500,000 people died of drug overdoses from 2000 through 2014 (CDC, 2016), clearly not what providers expect when writing opioid prescriptions for pain. There are compelling reasons for us to develop a means to combat opioid addiction and drug overdoses in an attempt to save lives. However, pain is a feared and fearsome symptom often experienced by patients with cancer. In oncology, advanced practitioners (APs) have struggled for decades with developing and implementing optimal and comprehensive ways to assess and effectively manage the significant pain that can often be associated with this disease.