CDC: Fentanyl Urgent Public Health Prob
www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2016/8/26/cdc-fentanyl-an-urgent-public-health-problem
Who believes that the alphabet soup of federal agencies will change their direction of believing that legal opiate prescribing is the major/direct cause of opiate addiction/abuse ? Maybe this information will force the DEA and others in law enforcement to change their enforcement focus. Maybe it will be a moment of ENLIGHTENMENT to politicians/bureaucrats that trying to “cure” those suffering from the mental health disease of addictive personality disorder is just making all of the increased numbers of substance abuse centers a revolving door and creating a “golden goose” for those for profit entities. Maybe we will follow the lead of other countries and treat substance abuse like other mental health issue and you treat/maintain… you cannot cure… Doing this will cause the drug cartels to have few customers… it will shred their business plan.. they will have to find another illicit business plan to make money.
As a society, we try to use the same/similar puritanical thread in our societal fabric to “cure” those who are in LGBTQ community.. Another failure of that 17th century mindset that persist within some in our society. No longer on our society’s radar is the ONE MILLION attempted suicide and 50,000 that succeed every year.. we are likewise oblivious to the > 500,000 deaths every year from the use/abuse of the two drugs Nicotine/Alcohol.
Maybe one day the “morality police” will come to the conclusion that there are some within our society that are or will get into a “death spiral” and try as we may… they can’t be saved from crashing.
By Pat Anson, Editor
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is finally acknowledging that the U.S. has a fentanyl problem that is growing worse by the day. And that more people are dying in some states from overdoses of illicit fentanyl than from prescription opioids.
“An urgent, collaborative public health and law enforcement response is needed to address the increasing problem of IMF (illicitly manufactured fentanyl) and fentanyl deaths,” CDC researcher Matthew Gladden, PhD, said in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. It is prescribed legally in patches and lozenges to treat chronic pain, but in recent years there has been a surge in overdoses linked to illicit fentanyl obtained on the black market, where it is often mixed with heroin.
In a new analysis of opioid overdoses in 27 states, the CDC identified eight “high burden” states where fentanyl overdoses sharply increased, even though fentanyl prescriptions were relatively stable.
Those states are Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina.
In six of the eight states, the CDC said fentanyl was the “primary driver” of synthetic opioid deaths – meaning they outnumbered overdoses from legal synthetic opioids. That is a major concession by the agency, which has long maintained that prescription opioids were primarily responsible for the nation’s so-called opioid epidemic.
The data analyzed was from 2013 and 2014. More recent reports from several states indicate the fentanyl problem has significantly worsened. The DEA recently reported the U.S. is being “inundated” with counterfeit prescription drugs made with fentanyl.
“This finding coupled with the strong correlation between fentanyl submissions (laboratory tests) and fentanyl-involved overdose deaths observed in Ohio and Florida and supported by this report likely indicate the problem of IMF is rapidly expanding,” Gladden wrote. “Recent (2016) seizures of large numbers of counterfeit pills containing IMF indicate that states where persons commonly use diverted prescription pills, including opioid pain relievers, might begin to experience increases in fentanyl deaths because many counterfeit pills are deceptively sold as and hard to distinguish from diverted opioid pain relievers.”
The CDC hasn’t been completely silent about the fentanyl problem. In October 2015 the agency issued a health advisory to public health departments, healthcare providers and medical examiners to be on the alert for fentanyl overdoses. Warnings to the public, however, have been scarce as the agency focused instead on controversial guidelines that discourage doctors from prescribing opioids for chronic pain.
Even the U.S. Surgeon General appears to be neglecting the fentanyl problem. This week Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, said he would be sending letters to over two million physicians urging them to follow the CDC guidelines and pledge to safely prescribe opioids. Nowhere in the letter or on a website promoting the “Turn the Tide” campaign is fentanyl even mentioned.
Critics of opioid prescribing have long maintained that opioid pain medication is often a gateway drug to heroin and other illicit substances, but recent research indicates that is not true.
“Although the majority of current heroin users report having used prescription opioids non-medically before they initiated heroin use, heroin use among people who use prescription opioids for non-medical reasons is rare, and the transition to heroin use appears to occur at a low rate,” researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Another recent study of military veterans found there was no significant link between heroin use and legally prescribed opioids or chronic pain.
Further compounding the problem is that some heroin and fentanyl deaths are falsely reported as overdoses from opioid pain medication due to inadequate or nonexistent toxicology tests.
Filed under: General Problems
And i state again…. If ppl overdose on drugs the government cares but they dont give a damn abt their quality of life before they die.
Until addiction is truly seen as a disease and treated that way by the medical profession othing will change. You never help a alcoholic by throwing away the bottle because all they will do is buy more until they are ready to quit. It is exactly the same thing with drugs. You also not get the number down until there is also affordable low cost long term treatment. Just like someone who has a major heart problem we will let see a doctor and treat you next year you need to have treatment available for the addict within a day or two. The addict who was abusing pain pills have moved to another drug like Heroin. This is why you are finding more deaths even though doctors are prescribing less. Meanwhile the government answer is to take the opiate away from everyone including those who suffer from daily intractable pain. This is leaving people like myself who have had 3 failed spinal surgeries and can no longer walk more then a 1/2 a block from getting the morphine that I have been on for 15 years and on the same dose the entire time. My doctor is the one who has the training to treat me, done the exams on me, done the tests, seen me, talked to me and therefore should be the one to decide how and what medication is best for me – not some politician. Until we have a attitude change and make major changes on how we deal with addiction the deaths will contine if not increase. However what is different from the past is that we are now these new policies, laws and attitude is having a whole new group of people who have done nothing illegal or wrong but suffer from chronic pain become the victims of drug abuse because they no longer can get the medication they need to have any type of quality of life.
jmo,,the dea CREATED this new market by budding into my PRIVATE medical issues,,the government should of NEVER EVER snooped into our private medical issue ,nor the MEDICINES we use to stay well,,it was NEVER EVER any of their business who is medically sick,,,Now there is a medieval treatment of the medically ill,,,there is a literal ,”witch hunt,” going on,,,all started by the dea and our government playing Dr.Government with OUR lives,,,I think thee only reason Dr.Government started playing doctor,ie dea is because they were thrown out of South America for human rites abuses,,,they need a job,,,employment to prove recklessly spending our tax dollars,,ie our doctors and us were the new employment,,sickos…The dea created this black market ,along w/cdc man klondike bar,,,,and conveniently they are the ones PROFITIING on thee entire black market,,Every single number have risen since Dr.Government started decideing my/your medical treatments for us, suicides tripled,o.d.’s tripled ,,everything it up,,,now obviously Dr.Government has created a inhumane mess,,,,u know,,the definition of STUPID is knowing the truth,,,Seeing the truth,,,but still believing the lies,,,our government is pretty dam stupid,willfully,,with our money,,,mary