Springfield Psychologist Owen Ward says he now spends most of his time trying to find doctors who will prescribe his patients pain medication for their physical injuries. Doctors say the former House Bill 93, a copy of which Ward holds, has had a chilling effect on the prescription of pain medication. Photo by Marshall Gorby, courtesy of the Springfield News-Sun.

A weeks-long investigation reveals that some people are getting short shrift in the crackdown on narcotics: those who actually need them. Here’s the main story, and here’s the sidebar, which focuses on a couple specific patients.

The Columbus Dispatch scooped us on the story after I had worked on it at least 4 weeks on-and-off. So I took another two weeks and reported a stunning fact — that some doctors think the medical board misled their ranks shortly after the law was passed.