on opioid consumption as evidence of the health system's failure to deliver relief from suffering and pain management was set as a priority of new health policy. Just as in the United States, opioids were destigmatized and became the symbol of pain management. Contracts were signed between the French government and global pharmaceutical companies in order to increase the health-care system's capacity to provide opioids; yet no disaster followed [7]. Where American pain specialists were convinced by insurance companies and hospital administrators to champion opioids as a means of cutting costs, French doctors were able to resist the pressure thanks to more favourable institutional conditions which allowed them to mute the effects of neoliberal health-care reform and to maintain a multi-modal approach to pain treatment [8].