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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/04/25/greg-gutfeld-opioids-facts-and-fallacies.html
I realize that every time I discuss the opioid crisis with someone, I find that they often don’t know all the facts. And maybe, neither do I. But I try.
So, my goal here is to present all the stuff that I’ve read recently, with links. And I quote the articles, extensively, so you can see what I see, and not depend on my words alone.
But I must note: this article below is biased. The sources I’m using were sent to me by people upset by the media narratives regarding opioids. So the perspective here is not “fair and balanced,” but rather balancing the other narratives already out there.
Am I 100 percent certain that all of this is correct? Nope.
But I think it’s important to hear the other side, before we start punishing the wrong people.
So here are the facts:
As opioid prescriptions decline, deaths related to opiods spike.
“The opposing trends show the folly of tackling the ‘opioid crisis’ by restricting access to pain medication,” writes the great Jacob Sullum, in Reason Magazine. Sullum offers the reader a graph, showing that death does not decline with a drop in prescriptions. “To the contrary, it has risen sharply in recent years, driven by dramatic increases in deaths involving heroin (orange) and illicit fentanyl…”
“The crackdown on pain pills not only has not reversed the upward trend in opioid-related deaths,” adds Sullum, “It is contributing to it by driving nonmedical users into the black market, where the drugs are more dangerous because their purity and potency are inconsistent and unpredictable.”
Opioid use isn’t the problem. Drug abuse, involving multiple drugs, is.
Check out this fact: the California Department of Health & Human Services published a paper looking at toxicology data from Marin County — particularly those people who had died from any drug. And the average number of drugs found in all overdoses was six. Not one… but six!!
In short, deaths from opioids often involve other substances. Meaning, this is about chronic abuse of multiple drugs – not a cancer or pain patient trying to get through the day.
What this also means, is that the numbers you often hear about opioid deaths aren’t really as large as you think. If you remove illegal drugs like heroin and fentanyl, the new numbers may be much lower. How low? Hard to tell, since the reporting is so murky.
Roughly only one percent of patients become addicted to painkillers
If you listened to politicians and the media – an overdose begins with a construction worker who injures his neck. He has surgery, and then is put on pills. Quickly he becomes a junkie, runs out of pills and turns to street drugs. He’s found dead.
Not really. Fact is, pain patients rarely become addicted. According to Reason Magazine, “A 2018 study found that just 1 percent of people who took prescription pain medication following surgery showed signs of “opioid misuse,” a broader category than addiction.”
And the mag adds, “Even when patients take opioids for chronic pain, only a small minority of them become addicted. The risk of fatal poisoning is even lower—on the order of two-hundredths of a percent annually, judging from a 2015 study.”
And here’s this from Politico, which has a slightly higher percentage of addiction: “According to a 2016 national survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 87.1 million U.S. adults used a prescription opioid—whether prescribed directly by a physician or obtained illegally…Only 1.6 million of them, or about 2 percent, developed a “pain reliever use disorder,” which includes behaviors ranging from overuse to overt addiction.”
Still, despite these facts, we hear “opioid epidemic,” which might serve to hurt cancer and pain patients, by restricting access. The “epidemic” label scares doctors with threats of investigation, monitoring of pharmacists, while creating limits on how many pills can be given. This, potentially, punishes the lawful.
Does this remind you of anything? Yep – the debate over guns. Friends of mine who are gun rights advocates will demand a drug ban. They can’t see their own hypocrisy. Whether its guns or medications (both products with inherent risks), you don’t punish the lawful, for the lawless. Instead you try to tag the abuser or the criminal, and leave the law-abiders alone.
Take a look at another piece from CATO, which suggests the war on “drugs,” is really a war on “patients.” And we’re letting it happen because we’re so used to blaming, rather than fixing.
Here’s the nugget: “A January 2018 study in BMJ by researchers at Harvard and Johns Hopkins examined 568,000 opioid naïve patients prescribed opioids for acute and postoperative pain from 2008 to 2016 and found a total “misuse” rate (all “misuse” diagnostic codes) of just 0.6 percent. And researchers at the University of North Carolina reported in 2016 on 2.2 million residents of the state who were prescribed opioids, where they found an overdose rate of 0.022 percent.”
Reformulating prescription pills doesn’t help either.
Roughly 8 years ago, the popular opioid OxyContin was remade to make it harder to abuse. What happened?
Heroin use soared. Between 2001 and 2010, there were roughly 2000 to 3000 deaths by heroin. But then it shot up to 10,000 from 2010 to 2015. Implication: the overdoses were not caused by pills, but perhaps a scarcity of pills.
“During the ensuing five years, OxyContin abuse dropped and the strict restrictions we now see on opioid pills began to take hold. The result? Between 2010-2015 opioid overdose deaths in the US increased by 65%, roughly 13,000. And…that increase was entirely due to injectable drugs like heroin or fentanyl. “
Equating the potency of opioids with heroin creates hysteria that hurts patients
It’s true that basic opioid pills and heroin actually hit the same brain receptors. But heroin doses used by addicts packs way more punch than opioids. And while it’s practically impossible for one hydrocodone pill to kill you – a heroin user can die from one injection. By conflating these two types of drugs, we make it sound like pills are as immediately lethal as what comes from the syringe.
They may belong to the same class of drugs, and “drug overdose deaths” groups these drugs together, but it’s a messy classification.
To quote ASCH:
“All opioids together (including heroin) killed 30,000 people. The number of deaths from prescription opioids—the target of the current crusade— was about 17,000— half the number killed by accidental falls. Are we having an “accidental fall epidemic?” Why not?”
“Prescription pain medicines are much more difficult to get than 7 years ago, and the only result has been suffering by pain patients and no benefit.”
The best way to save lives is for patients to be able to predict the potency of the drug delivery system.
When I drink wine, I know when to stop. The modulated alcohol delivery creeps up on your own system, giving you time to slow down, and stop.
When I used to smoke, I understood what I needed to get me to “that point.” How many cigarettes did I need to make me feel good? Generally, one or two. The fact that nicotine was divided into 20 uniform delivery systems (a pack of cigs), allowed me to figure out how far I wanted to go, before getting nauseous. By reducing prescriptions of opioids, you force people into the wild west of street meds, where no one knows what potency they’re getting. One pill could end it all, for you, on the street (but not from the pharmacy).
As Reason puts it, the increases in deaths are “related to heroin and illicit fentanyl, which are more dangerous than legally produced opioids because their potency is unpredictable.”
The CDC and others are exaggerating the numbers of overdoses by pills.
I’ll just quote this from Circa: “According to a recent article written by CDC officials in the American Journal of Public Health, death certificate data does not always differentiate between illegally and legally obtained drugs, so a fatal overdose involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl could have been counted as a legal opioid prescription death.
Because of this, the total deaths from prescription opioids would have appeared to be over 32,000 in 2016, but the numbers were probably closer to about 17,000, and the CDC said they changed their method of calculating these deaths in 2015 to account for the increased availability of illicit fentanyl.”
Inflated numbers have created a panic about prescription opioids, leading to an environment where chronic pain patients are targeted.
Pain patients are committing suicide because their paid meds are being taken from them.
“I’ve seen a published list that heavily emphasizes publicly reported events, which includes between 20 and 30 suicides,” says Stefan Kertesz, associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Alabama.”
“”Widespread suicidal ideation should be seen as a signal of a major risk,” he says.”
The government is now running interference between doctor and patient.
Currently, 17 states have laws that restrict opioid prescriptions; there are more to come. Florida Gov. Rick Scott just proposed a three-day limit on prescribed opioids; Massachusetts limits patients to a 7-day supply, and so on.
This is not entirely logical, when you consider surgical recovery. All post-surgical pain is different — as is patient response to meds.
This is from the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “For example, the effect of a drug on an individual is directly related to the weight of the patient. No dose of any drug will produce the same effect in a 100-pound woman as in a 300-pound man.”
Even more, drug metabolism differs. “It has been shown that the metabolism of opioids can vary as much as 15-fold from one individual to the next. This means that the same dose of a medicine could be too high for one person while at the same time being too low for another, regardless of weight.”
The New York Times is just making it worse.
In a recent piece, the paper says that the only people who should have access to opioids, are those who are going to die anyway. Forget anyone with gunshot wounds, broken legs, or surgery pain! Nope, you can only have the drug, if you’re doomed. I’d swear right now, but it would only make work for the copy editor.
So, as boring as this article might be — I tried to corral research you might not have seen, and slapped it together, so you can at least hear the other side.
It’s not an elegant piece. It’s not funny. But I hope it’s helpful.
I also realize that there are people who are gaming the system – using legitimate meds to feed a recreational addiction.
That’s life.
If you create something effective, there will always be an accompanying, corrupting influence. You create a currency, there will be counterfeiting. Humans are like that. There are a great many drugs that could help so many people, but we ban them because we fear abuse (MDMA is one such substance – one that could help in a number of conditions). So let’s focus on targeting the problems, and not the patients.
If this vaccine becomes a reality and a “former addict” has to under go surgery or is in a accident or failed surgery and becomes a chronic pain pt… are they just going to be SCREWED when it comes to pain management ? 
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http://www.narconon-suncoast.org/blog/narcan-resistant-fentanyl-found-in-pennsylvania.html
This year has brought a lot of bad news in the world of drugs and drug addiction. First, it was elephant tranquilizers being found in batches of heroin across the nation. Then, the number of deaths related to Fentanyl shot through the roof. And finally, we had fake Xanax make its way around Florida, killing at least 9 people. Drug use is scary these days and it’s astounding that anyone in their right mind would choose to use drugs. It seems like you never know what you’re gonna get. Now, we have another huge problem looming on the horizon and it looks completely dismal.
In Pittsburgh, PA a type of Narcan-resistant Fentanyl has been found in batches of heroin and it’s already causing numerous overdoses and deaths. Apparently, it’s hundreds of times more powerful than morphine and called Acryl-Fentanyl. There is a distinct difference between Fentanyl, Carfentanil and Acryl-Fentanyl. Believe it or not, Fentanyl and Carfentanil actually have legitimate, medical uses. Fentanyl is an extremely strong painkiller that’s usually given to patients before or after surgery and for those who are terminally ill. Carfentanil is, well, an elephant tranquilizer and has veterinary purposes. But Acryl-Fentanyl has no known purpose for even existing… and it’s highly troubling that it’s been synthesized.
You got it, Acryl-Fentanyl is synthesized, which means it’s artificially created and has no natural origin (remember, heroin’s natural origin is a poppy plant). Not only is it manmade, but it’s being created in China, like most other research chemicals and synthetic drugs and being smuggled into the United States.
DEA Special Agent In-Charge, David Battiste said, “If Acryl-fentanyl is introduced into the population, it can have devastating effects. You would have to reuse Narcan if you are revived from Narcan at all.”
That’s right folks, this stuff is completely resistant to Narcan. Like Special Agent Battiste said, it’s unlikely that Narcan will reverse its effects and, if it does, it will take multiple, multiple doses. We’re already having enough of a problem with the strength of opiates these days. Narcan is struggling to keep up and continue to save the lives of those who overdose. Acryl-Fentanyl is going to make this problem a whole lot worse and this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the devastating effects this drug is going to have on our society.
Opiate abuse has reached an all-time high, creating an all-time low for our society. Instead of curbing the problem and reducing use and abuse of painkillers and heroin, the problem only seems to be growing at exponential rates. Instead of halting the importing of these drugs into the country, they just keep flowing in. Want to know why? It’s because we consume this garbage. Manufacturers in China know, in my opinion, that they can keep making ultra-strong and deadly drugs and we’re going to consume it. And not only consume it, but consume it in mass quantities because the world knows that the United States has a completely unquenchable thirst for drugs.
If anyone you know is struggling with painkiller addiction or heroin abuse, get them help now! The opiate problem is getting so bad, you never know who’s going to die. Instead of waiting for that fateful day, get an addict you care about the help that they most desperately need. Before it’s too late.
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http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20180424/NEWS/180429960
I was completely surprised and overwhelmed by the lack of communication between the doctors and my dad and our family members. There were all kinds of medical errors I caught. Often, the questions I asked about his care were ones the average layperson wouldn’t even know to ask. It made me think about what most people deal with when they are hospitalized or caring for an elderly or sick family member.
My father, John W. Twyman III, was a retired Washington, D.C., police officer in his late 60s when my sisters and I became caregivers for him in 2010. He had chronic medical problems including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, end-stage renal disease and early dementia.
Father’s Day 2009: John W. Twyman III (center) is pictured with his four daughters. Dr. Nicole T. Rochester is to his immediate left.
When I spoke up as his daughter and pointed out concerns, I would find I was often ignored, until I stated that I was a physician. Then, all of a sudden they would listen and things would happen. I couldn’t imagine what happens to the millions of Americans who don’t have a professional person in the family watching out for them.
Over the three years that I was his caregiver, until he died in 2013, my father had a lot of different specialists. During hospitalizations, it was often very difficult to get information from the doctors. I would ask the cardiologist if he had talked to the nephrologist, because some of their orders were in direct contradiction. I would say, “OK, guys, are you all on the same team? Are you all talking?”
Each physician worked in a silo, focusing on whatever body part they handled. It was very difficult to coordinate his care.
It was not common for the doctors to read the notes of other members of the team. I did that for my dad, keeping up with all the recommendations and making sure they weren’t conflicting. That can be daunting.
At one point he was on five or six different medications for blood pressure, and he had a lot of dizziness and was falling. We realized he was taking multiple medications that were duplicates with different names. His primary-care doctor should have been the one to keep track, but unfortunately these things often fell through the cracks.
When my dad passed in February 2013, he was in a skilled-nursing facility recovering after a hospitalization. He had a cardiac arrest during dialysis. It’s not clear what triggered that event. We really don’t know if something happened during dialysis.
I was so moved by my experience as my dad’s caregiver that I left my practice as a pediatric hospitalist last year to launch a company to help patients and family caregivers navigate the healthcare system. I provide private patient advocacy services, including helping people find nursing home facilities, researching treatment options, and helping patients and families communicate with the healthcare team during hospitalizations.
My ultimate goal is to teach patients and family caregivers how to be effective advocates for themselves and how to be active partners with their healthcare providers. Doctors are great and mean well, but the system doesn’t allow the time for the type of rich communication that used to embody the doctor-patient relationship.
They are completely overwhelmed jumping through all the hoops required to practice medicine. Sometimes an empowered patient can feel like a threat. I want to help doctors understand that an informed patient is your best patient, even if it adds an extra five or 10 minutes to the visit.
My next phase will be speaking with healthcare providers. I’m trying to figure out the best way to get my message across in a way that will be well-received and won’t alienate my colleagues.
I’ve been approached by many doctors who’ve had similar experiences to mine in caring for aging parents or children with disabilities. Many of them said they experienced exactly what happened to me.
I’m excited that there’s finally a recognition that patients are a vital part of the healthcare team. Things are improving, but it’s going to be a very slow process. At the ground level in doctors’ offices and hospitals, it will take a long time for some of these ideas to become reality.
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Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here to answer your questions. https://cnn.it/2HnWeuY “Weed 4: Pot vs. Pills” premieres Sunday night at 8pET on CNN.
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https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/4/20/why-opioid-tapering-makes-me-think-of-suicide
By Charlene Bedford, Guest Columnist
I am 40 years old, with two young boys. In 2011, I was diagnosed with ankloysing spondylitis, a severe auto-immune disease for which there is no cure. I have severe damage to my sacroiliac joints. They are fused together, and boy is that painful. It is now traveling up my spine.
I have tried every biologic on the market and almost died from Cosentyx after developing a severe intestinal infection. I also almost died from Humira. I’ve had many medicines over many years, but I am stable on opiates, no longer bedridden and able to keep my job. The opiates take my pain level from a 10 down to a 3 or 4. They’re very effective. Nothing else even comes close in relief.
Then the CDC opioid guidelines came out. Last month my doctor said to me, “According to the CDC, I have to taper you off all opiates.”
I am a government contractor and have colleagues at the FDA, CDC, Medicare and Medicaid. I even emailed my state senator. They ALL told me there is no law that says she can’t prescribe opiates. It is still up to the doctors. But no doctor working within 100 miles of me will prescribe. I have called every single one since she stated she was going to taper me completely.
So, each day I can’t sleep, worrying about what is going to happen at my next refill. The dosage is being cut each time. I told my boss that once the medicine is gone, I will not be able to mentally or physically deal with the pain.
The pain in my spine is as bad as labor pain. It never goes away. Every minute, every day, all year long. No human can tolerate that kind of pain. I think about suicide, but I can’t leave my children. I’m thinking maybe I could buy heroin and use very little to control my pain. But I have never seen it, wouldn’t know where to get it, and figure I’m just better off dead.
CHARLENE BEDFORD
For 7 years I was a stellar patient. Never failed a drug test. Pill counts were always spot on. But now my life is literally being taken away. I can’t stand without medicine. I can’t walk without medicine. Yet addicts have 13 pages of rights I read about. If an addict is being treated with medication, they can’t be denied a job, housing, etc. But what happened to my rights? I am fully disabled.
To make matters worse, I asked the doctor about palliative care and she said “No, that is for cancer only.” Which I also found is not true. The three criteria for palliative care describe my illness exactly: no cure, a shortened life span, and a symptom treatment that significantly improves quality of life.
I can’t even oppose or file a complaint against my doctor or she will discharge me. She doesn’t like to be challenged.
Please, please help us. There will always be addicts. Putting everyone in one category is not right. There are more traffic deaths than overdoses but they’re not banning cars. One million abortions and that’s okay?
The inflated CDC overdose numbers that caused opioid hysteria are all a big fat lie. Yes, people will overdose, but studies show they would have anyway. They have mental health issues or other problems. How many of those deaths were related to patients being denied medicine? A bet there are a lot.
The studies are out there. Prescription opioids have declined, and heroin deaths increased. It’s not that hard to figure out why. The VA denies all opiates now. More vets are committing suicide than ever before.
This needs to stop. I want a lawsuit against the government. There is a federal law that states the government cannot interfere with doctor-patient care. Their fake hysteria and crisis have scared every doctor and they just aren’t prescribing. This has gone too far.
Charlene Bedford lives in Pennsylvania.
Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org.
The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.
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http://bigthink.com/focal-point/untreated-chronic-pain-violates-international-law
Untreated chronic pain is not only an epidemic, it’s a crime. According to a groundbreaking new report by Human Rights Watch, the majority of the world’s population lacks adequate access to narcotic pain relief. Governments are letting their own people suffer needlessly and flouting international law in the process.
In signing the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the international community acknowledged that narcotic drugs are “indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering.” Signatories committed to making these drugs available to those in need. However, HRW reports that most nations are failing to live up to that commitment. Eighty percent of the world’s population currently has inadequate access to narcotic painkillers.
According to the report:
“The poor availability of pain treatment is both perplexing and inexcusable. Pain causes terrible suffering yet the medications to treat it are cheap, safe, effective and generally straightforward to administer. Furthermore, international law obliges countries to make adequate pain medications available. Over the last twenty years, the WHO and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the body that monitors the implementation of the UN drug conventions, have repeatedly reminded states of their obligation. But little progress has been made in many countries.”
The report blames government inaction and excessively strict drug control policies for the global shortage of medical narcotics. Many governments are so afraid that morphine will be diverted for illicit purposes that they are willing to let sick people go without in order to keep criminals from cashing in. This warped logic is the equivalent of imprisoning the innocent to make sure that the guilty don’t go free.
The report identifies a vicious cycle of low supply and low demand: When painkillers are rare, health care providers aren’t trained to administer them, and therefore the demand stays low. If the demand is low, governments aren’t pressured to improve supply. The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs set up a global regulatory system for medical narcotics. Each country has to submit its estimated needs to the International Narcotics Control Board, which uses this information to set quotas for legal opiate cultivation. HRW found that many countries drastically understate their national need for narcotic medicines. In 2009, Burkina Faso only asked for enough morphine to treat 8 patients, or, enough for about .o3% of those who need it. Eritrea only asked for enough to treat 12 patients, Gabon 14. Even the Russian Federation and Mexico only asked the INCB for enough morphine to supply about 15% and 38% of their respective estimated needs.
Cultural and legal barriers get in the way of good pain medicine. “Physicians are afraid of morphine… Doctors [in Kenya] are so used to patients dying in pain…they think that this is how you must die,” a Kenyan palliative care specialist told HRW investigators, “They are suspicious if you don’t die this way – [and feel] that you died prematurely.” The palliative care movement has made some inroads in the West, but pharmacological puritanism and overblown concerns about addiction are still major barriers to pain relief in wealthy countries. In the U.S., many doctors hesitate to prescribe according to their medical training and their conscience because they’re (justifiably) afraid of getting arrested for practicing medicine.
Ironically, on March 3, the same day the HRW report was released, Afghanistan announced yet another doomed attempt to eradicate opium poppies, the country’s number one export and the source of 90% of the world’s opium. The U.S. is desperate to convince Afghans to grow anything else: “We want to help the Afghan people make the move from poppies to pomegranates so Afghanistan can regain its place as an agricultural leader in South Asia,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an address to the Afghan people last December. Pomegranates? Sorry, Madame Secretary, but the world needs morphine more than grenadine.
Photo credit: Flickr user Dano, distributed under Creative Commons. Tweaked slightly by Lindsay Beyerstein for enhanced legibility.
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www.medium.com/@robertdrosejr/are-you-addicted-to-oxygen-e22c33cd3da
Presiding Judge — The Honorable Clarence Darrow
Testimony of Dr. Hippocrates of Kos;
Plaintiff— Dr. Hippocrates, do you like coffee, tea or even breathing?
Defense — Objection! The claimant is threatening the witness!
Plaintiff — Objection? It is a simple question simply to determine if the good doctor if he enjoys life’s simpler pleasure. May I explain your Honor?
Judge — Humm… proceed cautiously sir…
Plaintiff — Understood Sir. The thing is, if the good doctor enjoys any one of these items and the courts deny him his guaranteed right to enjoy the pleasures pursuing happiness, then there will be consequences. First, if you deny Dr. Hippocrates either tea of coffee he has been drinking for many years, then the good doctor will experience various physical discomforts. Some of these include elevated blood pressure, severe headaches and even nervous tremors and cravings. These symptoms can even lead to death by heart attack or even stroke if the blood pressure is not controlled sufficiently.
Now breathing, like denial of pain medications for intractable pain, is very similar in that the body does require it in order to maintain normal functioning of the body similar to pain medications. If you deny the body of either, serious side effects will occur. Various organs within the body will start compensating in order to survive and protect the brain from a complete shutdown. With continued oxygen deprivation results in fainting, long-term loss of consciousness, coma, seizures, cessation of brain stem reflexes, and eventual brain death.
Denial of pain medications will lead to chronic cardiovascular stress, hyperglycemia which both predisposes to and worsens diabetes, splanchnic vasoconstriction leading to impaired digestive function and potentially to catastrophic consequence. Unrelieved pain can be accurately thought of as the “universal complicator” which worsens all coexisting medical or psychiatric problems through the stress mechanisms and by inducing cognitive and behavioral changes in the sufferer which can interfere with obtaining needed medical care. The risk of death by suicide is more than doubled in chronic pain patients, relative to national rates.*
Judge — Objection overruled…. I find the Claimant has proven his case and find the defendant guilty of crimes of medical malpractice…. Court Adjourned!!!
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A document from CVS Caremark shines another small ray of light on how pharmacy benefit managers work within the prescription drug chain.
The big picture: The language is pretty standard and not controversial on its own, according to several lawyers who reviewed the document. But it reinforces the lack of transparency that exists even in taxpayer-subsidized drug programs like Medicare Part D.
The details: The document, obtained from a person who works in the pharmacy industry, is an amendment to an agreement between CVS Caremark and an outside pharmacy. It’s related to Medicare Part D, the $95 billion prescription drug program. The amendment outlines what a pharmacy should do in the event the federal government audits any Part D records tied to CVS.
The pharmacy should:
CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis said the amendment was made to stay in lockstep with federal regulations, and that “it simply describes commonplace procedures used by companies of all industries, including the health care industry, to protect their proprietary information.”
The bottom line: Companies obviously want to protect trade secrets, and this language more or less addresses that in a specific instance. But these kinds of situations become more complicated when information, such as
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https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/govt-move-opioid-abuse-backfires/
There has been much discussion in recent years about the crisis of opioid abuse, and while there is broad agreement that “something must be done,” there are innocent victims of a crackdown on opioid drugs that often go unnoticed.
According to the Cato Institute, those overlooked victims are hospitalized patients recovering from accidents or surgeries who are in serious pain, but are unable to receive necessary doses of powerful painkillers to ease their suffering.
Rather than being administered proper doses of opioid drugs, these patients are instead being treated with less effective drugs like acetaminophin, muscle relaxers and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, similar to what one could obtain over the counter at a local drug store.
In other words, while these people are wracked with excruciating pain and legitimately require the powerful opioid drugs to ease their pain, they are instead left suffering in a literal “hell on earth” due to government intrusion into the pharmaceutical market.
The problem stems from a national quota set by the Drug Enforcement Administration that limits the amount of opioid drugs that can be manufactured and sold.
It was first announced in late 2016 that production of opioids would be reduced by at least 25 percent. The DEA then announced in 2017 that it would reduce 2018 production of opioid drugs by at least another 20 percent from earlier reductions.
The cuts have resulted in a shortage of powerful opioid drugs needed for the legitimate purpose of easing the pain of accident victims, cancer patients and those recovering from surgery, leaving them in a world of hurt.
Making matters worse, the DEA’s cuts are fairly misguided, as the real problem of the “opioid crisis” isn’t the drugs themselves, but the results of an addiction to opioids.
When patients who have been prescribed opioid painkillers can no longer receive those powerful drugs, they often turn to illegal drugs obtained on the street like heroin and fentanyl, which are totally unregulated and when not properly administered, can result in fatal overdoses.
The highly addictive nature of opioid drugs and a tendency for doctors and hospitals to over-prescribe the drugs as a sort of panacea for all health issues is a legitimate problem.
But that problem would likely be better addressed by more stringent oversight in regard to the prescribing of these powerful drugs, not in a blanket reduction of the overall production of the drug that has caused shortages and left legitimate patients in need.
It should also be noted that the DEA alone isn’t responsible for this terrible turn of events, as other factors are most certainly also at play, such as the ongoing consolidation of the pharmaceutical industry, the unfathomable length of time it takes the Food and Drug Administration to approve new drugs and, of course, the typical ebb-and-flow of supply and demand in a market economy.
But the mandated production cuts by the DEA has exacerbated the problems surrounding opioid abuse. Aside from leaving legitimate patients in pain, the move could also result in more patients turning to alternatives like heroin or fentanyl to deal with their incredible pain on their own, which raises the risk of overdose or running afoul of the laws against illicit drug use.
Many people have viewed the overarching “war on drugs” as largely being a failure — drug abuse rates have remained steady despite the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars to combat the problem — and this recent move to crackdown on the opioid crisis is simply the latest such misguided government effort to combat drug abuse and addiction.
The opioid abuse crisis deserves plenty of attention, but keep in mind there are legitimate purposes for such drugs and a blanket reduction in their availability does nothing to solve the underlying problem. In fact, it only makes things worse for those truly in need.
Let’s remember those hospital patients in severe pain as we continue to debate the best way to reduce addiction and dependence on powerful drugs.
What do you think? Scroll down to comment below!
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