Most of us would assume that doctors would know if they are treating a patient who was recovering from an opioid drug addiction.
But the story of Charleston's Jessie Grubb has certainly changed a lot of minds about that.
After battling heroin addiction for seven years, the 30-year-old had been sober for six months and making a new life for herself in Michigan. She had become an avid runner, and in 2016, had to undergo surgery for a running injury.
Her parents, former state Sen. David Grubb and his wife Kate, went to the hospital for the operation. They made a point of telling the doctors and the nurses about her addiction and recovery and stressed that she should not be given opioids unless under the strictest supervision.
But somehow the word never got to the discharging doctor, who wrote Jessie a prescription for 50 oxycodone pills. That night she apparently took eight of them and died.
"For a recovering addict, it's like putting a bottle of bourbon in front of an alcoholic; it's just too great a temptation and it's just a thing that never, ever should have been put in front of her," her father told the Charleston Gazette-Mail last year. "She went home with, in essence, a loaded gun."
This week, West Virginia's two U.S. senators, Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito, reintroduced legislation called "Jessie's Law" to hopefully bring medical professionals into the loop in such cases and make sure that - if consent is given - they know about a patient's addiction history.
"After learning of Jessie's passing, I promised her father that her death would not be in vain," Manchin said in a news release. Capito also stressed that legislation is designed to save lives and "make a difference as we continue fighting the drug epidemic."
The legislation certainly would close an important gap in communication. But just as importantly, Jessie's story reminds us that prescribing such large doses of powerful opioids in such a casual manner needs to become a thing of the past.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has proposed pain management guidelines that stress alternative approaches first and recommend opioids be used in the most limited way. We urge the health-care industry to adopt those standards and help close a major gateway to addiction.