SciAm: Opioid Policies Unintended Consequences...

[drusso]

We're Overlooking a Major Culprit in the Opioid Crisis

Pharmaceutical companies and drug dealers have been part of the problem—but so have policy makers

www.scientificamerican.com

"Advocates led mainly by a group called Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing made the case to policymakers and politicians that since overprescribing caused the epidemic, reducing medical use would solve the problem. And they did succeed in significantly shrinking the medical supply: since 2011, opioid prescribing has been cut by more than 60 percent. Unfortunately, however, as medical use declined, the total number of overdose deaths more than doubled between 2011 and 2020. Indeed, even before the pandemic, more overdose deaths had occurred since prescribing began to fall than took place while medical opioid use was soaring."

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[kstarm]

Right, it is so easy for patients to have insight into their addiction and to get patients with an addiction to comply with treatment. What were we thinking by taking responsibility for our part in the opioid epidemic and actually using evidence to help standardize prescribing practices.

This article just comes across as naive at best. Many people do start their addiction by taking medications that are not prescribed to them. Those meds came from scripts that almost always were not needed. People don't need 100 tabs of oxycodone following a arthroscopic knee surgery. But that was practice. Those pills sit in cabinets waiting to be found by someone else.

It is not just the overdoses, it is the morbidity of chronic opioid use that never gets talked about in these articles that is pertinent to reduced opioid prescribing.

 

[Ducttape]

The article and so many supporting this claim ignore basic epidemiology of addiction and is too simplistic.

the overdose deaths from prescription opioids have stayed stable or even fallen since 2010.

the increase in overdose deaths is completely fueled by the introduction of carfentanil and other synthetic opioids. In 2019, 73% of opioid deaths were from illegal synthetic opioids, compared to previously.

 

[Ducttape]

Sorry I accidentally deleted the section after the image.

the rest of the article rightly discusses the lack of availability of buprenorphine. Not discussed to a large extent is that even with buprenorphine available, without some measure of reducing availability of synthetic opioids, we will still have increased deaths. We need to severely cut supply, cause that’s the only objective action that will reduce the death drug availability.

In addition, articles like this are still pointing fingers at other “sources” other then the root problem - that we as an American society are so focused on instant gratification.

A pain pill will cure my pain. Surgery will cure my problem.

So instant gratification from pain pills. Same for surgery to “fix” a problem. breast implant. Butt implant. Botox. TKR. Lumbar fusion. SI fusion. You name it.



Heck, I’m thinking this thought process holds true for these suicidal murderers with their high powered guns and multiple rounds of ammo responsible for all this gun violence recently...

 

[lobelsteve]

Dropbox - File Deleted - Simplify your life

www.dropbox.com

Large file. Powerpoint lecture given 3 years ago or so for dentists and OMFS in GA and SC. Many of the slides used without permission of Algosdoc. Slide 16 starts on the history of the opiate epidemic in the USA.

 

[SeniorWrangler]

Correlation vs causation, it's Stats 101.
"Even as lockdowns proliferated across the United States, the number of deaths from COVID increased..... clearly the lockdowns were causing people to get sick."
"Even as the summer temperatures increased, the number of deaths from drowning increased.... clearly, people were somehow sweating themselves to death."