For decades, the American approach to pain management has been caught in a dangerous paradox: prescribing addictive opioids to treat injury, only to create a secondary crisis of addiction. While progress has been made, the human cost is nearly incomprehensible. However, with President Trump’s January 29 executive order establishing the "Great American Recovery Initiative", the nation is officially pivoting toward a more comprehensive, holistic, and non-addictive future in pain care. The innovation, technology, and political momentum needed to break the cycle have finally aligned.
Recent, harrowing data underscore the necessity for this pivot. Although significant efforts have lowered fatalities from the peak of the epidemic, the mortality statistics remain staggering. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), while 2024 saw a 26.2% decrease in drug overdose deaths, provisional data indicated approximately 79,384 deaths occurred in 2024, down from over 110,000 in 2023. In the 12 months ending August 2025, approximately 73,000 people still died from overdoses.
These numbers, while trending in the right direction, represent a continuing national tragedy, largely driven by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Moreover, in 2024 over 40 million Americans reported struggling with a substance use disorder. The status quo is not just ineffective; it is fatal. We must shift from treating pain solely with medication to managing it in a way that restores quality of life without inviting addiction.
President Trump’s Executive Order builds on two key federal actions that position pain care as central to opioid harm reduction: the HHS Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force and the bipartisan No PAIN Act (Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction in the Nation) signed into law in December 2022. The first-of-its-kind Task Force report outlines comprehensive, evidence-based recommendations for improving acute and chronic pain care. The No PAIN Act, for the first time, expands and incentivizes Medicare coverage for non-opioid pain treatments in surgical settings, breaking the financial barrier that often makes opioids the default, cheaper choice.
The "new age" of pain management is not about just replacing one pill with another; it is about treating pain through diverse, specialized pathways.
There are emerging pain management therapies that target non-central nervous system pathways (rather than central opioid receptors) known as novel non-opioid pharmacology’s. According to the NIH, these therapies have the potential to provide pain relief for different types of pain, including chronic, inflammatory, and neuropathic pain. In early 2025, the FDA approved Journavx (suzetrigine)—a first-in-class, non-opioid oral medication targeting pain-signaling sodium channels in the peripheral nervous system rather than the brain. This represents a monumental leap in treating acute pain without addiction risk.
SentryX, a Dutch biotech company, is developing spine surgery pain blockers with ILA-technology. An innovative and common-sense approach to acute pain management using a safe and effective local anesthetic. The investigational SentryX therapy is currently in clinical trials in Europe. Developing an opioid-sparing solution is of utmost relevance given that, currently, many addictions arise from high use of opioids in the first days following extremely painful procedures such as spine surgery.
The future of pain relief will also be electrical and digital electrical. Advanced devices such as closed-loop and combination-wavelength spinal cord stimulation (SCS), peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS), and Basivertebral Nerve Ablation (BNA) are becoming smart tech for the body. By using low-voltage electrical currents through adhesive electrodes on the skin, these systems interrupt pain signals, improving function and quality of life, while decreasing opioid exposure, disability, and health care utilization.
Non-opioid innovations should play an integral role in the Great American Recovery Initiative, as preventing addiction is the most effective way to keep Americans – especially young Americans – productive and healthy. We need to align our pain management product review system around non-opioid options and drive reimbursement mechanisms for private payers to non-opioids, so they are widely available in the U.S. healthcare system. Not prioritizing this approach is failing a system that is overburdened by the cost of addiction.
The emergence of new technologies in the pain management space is long overdue and needed by patients. They should be identified and fast-tracked by the FDA, applying real-world data with a common-sense approach to reviewing product safety and efficacy, while retaining enforcement and penalties for product endangerment when used egregiously.
Mia Heck is a Senior Fellow for Healthcare at the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy and a Northern Virginia–based public policy consultant.
