Blaming Prescription Pain Pills For The Opioid Epidemic Is Fake News

[corbe]

Blaming Prescription Pain Pills For The Opioid Epidemic Is Fake News
 
How negligent media have helped inflate a deadly moral panic over prescription opioids and ignored the real sources of addiction, while hurting people who live with devastating chronic pain.

By Peter Pischke   
March 26, 2019

Angela Kennecke is a popular reporter for a television news station in my hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Each weeknight, Kennecke is at the anchor desk for KELO, a CBS affiliate, and has been there as long as I can remember. For many people in the “Sioux Empire,” Kennecke’s work on television is a normal part of the day, and they can count on her to tell them how it is.

But Kennecke’s objectivity was shaken in May 2018, when her 21-year-old daughter, Emily, was found dead after overdosing on heroin that had been laced with the opioid fentanyl. This tragedy, which made national news, deeply affected Kennecke and the Sioux Falls community. Now, almost a year since Emily’s death, Kennecke has become South Dakota’s leading reporter on the opioid crisis.

In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counted 47,600 opioid-related deaths, three-quarters of which involved heroin or “synthetic opioids other than methadone,” a category that consists mainly of fentanyl or its analogs. In 2011, 2,666 deaths involved drugs in that category; by 2017 the number had increased to 28,466, or 60 percent of opioid-related deaths.

Fentanyl in the medical setting is the narcotic drug most commonly administered during surgery. Outside the surgical room, it is primarily prescribed by doctors in the hospital to palliative care patients due to its high potency, which is 50 to 100 times greater than that of morphine. Unfortunately, fentanyl is also dirt cheap for black-market drug dealers to import from China and Mexico. In recent years, traffickers have increasingly turned to fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute.

The Rise of Black Market Fentanyl

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http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/26/blaming-prescription-pain-pills-opioid-epidemic-fake-news/

[mountaineer]

Contrary to what you may have read or see on TV, addiction is rare among people who take opioids for pain. In a 2018 study of about 569,000 patients who received opioids after surgery, for example, just 1 percent of their medical records included diagnostic codes related to “opioid misuse.” According to federal survey data, “pain reliever use disorder” occurs in 2 percent of Americans who take prescription opioids each year, including non-medical users as well as bona fide patients.

Oh. Never mind. Doesn't stop state attorneys general for pursuing big paydays from the pharmaceutical manufacturers:

Purdue Pharma Agrees To $270 Million Opioid Settlement With Oklahoma
By editor • Mar 26, 2019

The first of more than 1,600 lawsuits pending against Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin, has been settled.

The drugmaker has agreed to pay $270 million to fund addiction research and treatment in Oklahoma and pay legal fees. ...

Rest of story

As an aside, of the 40 oxycodones prescribed for me after a medical procedure in December, I still have well over 30 left. Not for sale, though. 

[Sanguine]

Good article.

[mountaineer]

I've seen on Twitter a large group of people with chronic pain who complain of being vilified as opioid abusers. Oxycodone, et al., can be a valuable and even essential pharmaceutical option for some people, especially cancer sufferers. My late mother had severe osteoarthritis in every joint as well as CLL (leukemia). Despite wearing a Fentanyl patch for a long time, she still experienced excruciating pain.