Prevent Prescription Opioid Overdose
https://www.cdc.gov/rxawareness/prevent/
Saving lives from opioid overdose through the Rx Awareness campaign relies on the efforts of state and local agencies and organizations across the country. By sharing the campaign materials in your communities, you can broaden the reach of the message that, “It only takes a little to lose a lot.”
Get the Facts
Prescription opioids (like hydrocodone, oxycodone, and morphine) can be prescribed by doctors to treat moderate to severe pain, but have serious risks and side effects.
From 1999 to 2017, more than 200,000 people died from overdoses related to prescription opioids, with more than 17,000 prescription opioid overdose deaths occurring in 2017.
The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths include:
- Oxycodone (such as OxyContin®)
- Hydrocodone (such as Vicodin®)
- Methadone
Overdose is not the only risk related to prescription opioids. Misuse, abuse, and opioid use disorder (addiction) are also potential dangers.
Anyone who takes prescription opioids can become addicted to them.
There are TWO KINDS OF FACTS:
Those that support your agenda …. Those that work AGAINST your agenda…
Take the figure of 200,000 people dying in the 19 yr period of 1999 – 2017 … that comes out to 29 deaths PER DAY… a LOT LESS than the normal claim of over 100 OD drug deaths per day… that is typically quoted to describe the OPIATE CRISIS.
So what caused the other 100/day deaths…they are seeming to ignore in this press release… COULD IT BE ILLEGAL DRUGS , especially one or more of the 1400 illegal fentanyl analogs ?
Even the deaths of 17,000 in 2017… again that is 46 deaths/day …far less than the usual quote of drug OD deaths per day.
Of course in that same 19 yr time frame… alcohol would have contributed to some 1.5 + million and Tobacco/Nicotine would cause 9+ million deaths. Those two “DRUGS” are only contributing to 1500 deaths/day…. BUT… we don’t have any discussion of a crisis involving those two legal drugs.
YES… anyone taking a legal opiate can become addicted to them… but… addiction is a mental health issue…. so prescribing a opiate to a person who is already diagnosed/treated for certain mental health issues and/or the pt has undiagnosed/untreated mental health issues… they can possibly become addicted… or the NEW TERM – opioid use disorder.
Filed under: General Problems
When I saw that pic with the whine “my…pain medication lasted a lot longer than the pain itself” my instantaneous reaction was to wish I could reach into the pic & beat the moron briskly about the head. Here’s a radical, news-flashy idea: STOP TAKING IT.
And if you keep taking it after you don’t need it b/c you like recreational drug use, then you’re a recreational drug user. That’s your choice –sorry all you “addicts have no choice in the matter” folk, but I’d bet everything I’ve ever had that the pill bottle didn’t chase him down & force unneeded pain pills down his throat.
Good point, And then, on what the whine woulda been if he’d gotten too little.
I’ve lost nearly all sympathy for doctors b/c they (most of them) have done nothing whatsoever to help patients, only been in raging CYA mode, but it’s also asinine to expect doctors to know *exactly* how long every patients’ pain is GOING to last & thus be able to prescribe only how many pain pills they’re going to need.
“Mike”, in the CDC video states his pain script contain medication that he did not need because his pain had subsided perhaps sooner than expected.
Yet it seems he is complaining – what would he have said if the doctor did not prescribe enough pain medication to adequately treat the length of his recovery?