What Texas Law Calls a Crime When a Doctor Stops Your Opioids Cold

I am not a lawyer, and this is not an accusation. It is a reading assignment. I went and read the Texas statutes myself, the actual text, and I am going to put the relevant parts in front of you next to the facts of my own case. You can do the rest.

Start with what the law means by injury.

Most people think "bodily injury" means a broken bone or a wound. Texas does not. Section 1.07 of the Penal Code defines it in one line: "physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical condition." That is the whole definition. Pain counts. Illness counts. Any impairment counts.

The same section defines "serious bodily injury" as bodily injury that "creates a substantial risk of death," among other things.

Hold on to both of those.

Next, what the law says about causing injury by doing nothing.

Section 22.04 of the Penal Code is titled Injury to a Child, Elderly Individual, or Disabled Individual. It makes it an offense to cause bodily injury or serious bodily injury to one of those people, either by an act or by an omission. An omission counts when the person "has a legal or statutory duty to act" or "has assumed care, custody, or control" of the individual.

The statute says what "assumed care" means. A person has assumed it if, "by act, words, or course of conduct," they have acted so as to cause a reasonable person to conclude that they accepted responsibility for that individual's "medical care."

And it says who counts as a disabled individual. Among others, a person who "by reason of age or physical or mental disease, defect, or injury is substantially unable to protect the person's self from harm or to provide food, shelter, or medical care for the person's self."

Depending on the mental state involved, the offense runs from a state jail felony up to a felony of the first degree.

Then, what the law says about prescribing.

Section 481.071 of the Health and Safety Code says a practitioner may not prescribe a controlled substance "except for a valid medical purpose and in the course of medical practice."

That sentence cuts in both directions. It governs why a prescription is written. It also raises a question nobody seems to ask out loud: what is the valid medical purpose of changing a stable patient's prescription so that a pharmacy dispenses fewer pills?

Last, a rule that is not criminal at all, but is simple to check.

Texas Medical Board rules give a physician 15 business days after a written request to furnish a patient's records, or to give the patient a signed, dated written statement explaining the denial. Counting 15 business days is not a matter of opinion.

Now the facts. Only the facts.

I was a patient of record at a Garland pain practice for about six years. I have osteoarthritis in every joint in my body. It first showed up in my knees, decades ago. It is inherited and degenerative, and it is not going to get better. For six years the treatment worked. I ran my company. No clinical problem existed.

I was moved to a higher-strength tablet. The reason I was given was that the DEA had taken an interest in the practice and they needed to dispense fewer pills. The pill count went down. The milligrams went up.

A second medication was then swapped for another. The reason given was the same: fewer pills.

Then all of it was stopped. No taper.

I asked for a taper. I asked more than once, over a period of weeks, and I asked in writing on September 19, 2026. I was told that asking could get me discharged. No taper was written.

In that same office, my prescriber talked, out loud, about criminal exposure arising from how this was being handled. I did not raise the subject. He did.

A licensed pharmacist I had never spoken to before told me that stopping these medications this way was life-threatening. I have that call on tape.

When I wrote to the office afterward, the reply was "do not contact this office anymore."

I requested my complete medical records in writing, by fax, on 16 September 2026. As I write this, they have not been produced.

My primary care physician is a doctor who does not like prescribing opioids. He looked at the same history on September 21, 2026 and wrote a taper. The taper was available the whole time.

And the pain came back, the way pain does when the thing holding it down is taken away. Physical pain. Illness. Impairment of physical condition. Those are not my words for it. They are the Penal Code's.

I am not going to tell you what any of this adds up to. That is for the people whose job it is.

I have only put the law and the facts side by side, and you can connect the dots...

More to come.