My job as a physician is to help cancer patients feel better during and after treatment. An obvious part of this is managing pain. The mantra for cancer patients has always been, "don't be afraid to treat pain". This means that we shouldn't hesitate to give strong pain medications like percocet, oxycodone, and morphine to cancer patients since they are truly suffering. While the suffering of these patients is absolutely correct, that does not necessarily mean that an opioid pain medication is always the right choice.
The real issue from my perspective is that as cancer treatments are improving, more people are surviving cancer. The number of cancer survivors is rising exponentially (over 13 million in the U.S. today). Therefore, in many cases, when we treat cancer patients, we are treating patients that will be around for a long, long time. As opioid pain medications can be addictive and have many side effects, they may not be the right choice for these patients. For patients that don't have metastatic cancer, I prefer to avoid opioids for pain, except for immediately after surgery. After that, pain can typically be managed in other ways, including non-pharmacological treatments like physical therapy. By physicians overprescribing opioid pain medications to cancer patients, these patients may end up on these medications for life. This is often unnecessary and may be doing patients a great disservice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/sunday-review/profiting-from-pain.html?_r=0
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