Some physicians are so fearful of the DEA oversight of narcotics, they don’t even apply for prescribing privileges of opioids:

Patient 1, a young man, became acutely ill with an aggressive but highly treatable cancer that caused severe acute chest pain. Since he had to make quick and extremely difficult decisions about his treatment options, he sought advice and pain medication from his trusted primary care physician -— only to learn that his physician, wishing to be spared any possibility of regulatory suspicion, had never applied for prescribing privileges for strong opioids. At this critical juncture, the patient, who is himself a physician, had to find a new doctor in order to receive standard pain treatment.

Expect this to increase as more physicians shy away from the problems of narcotic prescribing.