www.edsinfo.wordpress.com/2018/05/15/the-lethal-success-of-pain-pill-restrictions/
In a speech on Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department is striving to “bring down” both “opioid prescriptions” and “overdose deaths.”
A study published the following day suggests those two goals may be at odds with each other, highlighting the potentially perverse consequences of trying to stop people from getting the drugs they want.
Columbia University epidemiologist David Fink and his colleagues systematically reviewed research on the impact of prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs), which all 50 states have established in an effort to prevent nonmedical use of opioid analgesics and other psychoactive pharmaceuticals
The review covers 17 studies, 10 of which looked at the relationship between PDMPs and deaths involving narcotic pain relievers. Three studies “reported a decrease,” six “reported no change,” and one “reported an increase in overdose deaths.”
The picture looks worse when you take into account deaths involving illegally produced drugs, which now account for a large majority of opioid-related fatalities. Fink et al. found six studies that included heroin overdoses, half of which reported a statistically significant association between adoption of PDMPs and increases in such incidents.
Restricting access to pain pills also seems to be increasing the percentage of opioid users who begin with heroin. A 2015 survey of people entering treatment for opioid use disorder found 33 percent had started with heroin, up from 9 percent in 2005.
If the aim is preventing drug-related deaths, this shift is counterproductive, to say the least. Because their purity and potency are inconsistent and unpredictable, illegally produced opioids are much more dangerous than pain pills.
Comparing deaths counted by the federal government to its estimates of users suggests that heroin is more than 10 times as lethal as prescription opioids.
Policies that drive people toward more dangerous drugs help explain why deaths involving heroin and illicit fentanyl have skyrocketed in recent years, even as opioid prescriptions have declined.
That trend includes a 252 percent increase in heroin-related deaths and an astonishing 628 percent increase in deaths involving the opioid category that consists mainly of fentanyl and its analogues.
Final CDC figures for 2017 are not available yet, but the provisional numbers indicate there will be more increases.
In addition to magnifying the risks that nonmedical users face, the crackdown on pain pills is hurting patients.
Many people who have successfully used opioids to treat severe chronic pain for years now find it difficult or impossible to obtain the medication they need to maintain a decent quality of life.
The article below is of the same tone: ridiculing a government immune to facts, which persistently prosecutes a non-problem (use of pain medication) to solve a problem (addiction).
New Research Reinforces Earlier Studies Suggesting PDMPs Are Adding to Opioid Overdose Rate – May 9, 2018 – By Jeffrey A. Singer
Filed under: General Problems
Looks like our government is murdering its most serious ill and injured! Murderers that’s what they’ve done. They’ve basically forced us to live agonizing lives till we try to find a way to stop it or end it. I don’t even want to be an American anymore. I would honestly sell my citizenship to the highest bidder at this point.
I would be interested in knowing what is the first drug these addicts first abused. I find it hard to believe that someone just picks up heroin without trying something else first, like alcohol or cigarettes.
Really…alcohol and cigarettes?