Posted on 05/04/2023 11:33:39 AM PDT by anthropocene_x
In the middle of an epidemic of opioid overdoses, doctors, hospitals and pharmacies across America are facing intense pressure to cut back on prescribing and dispensing the drugs. About 8 million patients in the U.S. who depend on opioids to face constant, intense pain are at risk of losing access to the one treatment that seems to make the pain bearable.
The number of opioid prescriptions has plummeted from a high of 251 million in 2010 to well under half that number in 2020. Yet the number of opioid overdoses has only continued to climb, even as drugs like buprenorphine that can help overcome addiction and slash the risk of overdose are becoming harder to access than opioids themselves.
A 2021 review study found the risk of addiction from prescription opioids was less than 3%, suggesting the number for acute pain patients is lower. By contrast, the U.S.' opioid addiction and overdose problem is massive—and almost entirely driven by illicit use of fentanyl smuggled into the country. Fentanyl is mostly manufactured in China and smuggled into the U.S. through Mexico or South America.
Cutting back on opioid prescriptions has had a big unintended effect: It's made it increasingly difficult for legitimate patients with an ongoing medical need for treatment for severe pain to get relief from prescribed opioids.
Chronic prescription opioid users, in fact, tend to use the drug relatively safely.
The bigger risk comes in forcing them to cut way back or stop. One large study found that reducing dosages increased patients' risk of overdose by more than 25 percent and of being hospitalized for a mental health crisis by about 75 percent. A second large study found that stopping their medications altogether made them about four times more likely to die by suicide.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
I thought we legalized marijuana because it was the miracle drug for pain. Hmmmm.
Boomers got their weed. So what’s the problem?
Opiod use/mususe has not declined in states with medical marijuana or even recreational MJ.
I see nothing in my copy of the constitution that says anything about any governmental entity having any say about what goes in my body.
Which is why it should be a FELONY for ANY Public Employee Nationwide to procure or attempt to procure ANY Opiod of any kind. We need to protect our Public Employee’s from this Dangerous Drug and Putting them in Prison for 5 years if they do acquire it or attempt to acquire an Opiod just might SAVE THEIR LIFE
Just like gun control wont save any lives.
The result is you can barely get ANY kind of pain drugs anymore, thanks to the Oxy junkies and their incompetent doctors. A friend needed valium for a series of MRIs (she gets super claustrophobic inside) and after 12 phone calls they gave her a bottle...with ONE valium. It’s nuts.
No opiates for the DEA folks.
A few years ago at our shiny new VA clinic in Cape Coral FL, a veteran who had depended on the VA to help him with years of chronic pain from kidney stones was denied any further access to effective pain control. He went to his vehicle in their parkig lot and blew his brains out.
I understand he left a note hoping his death might help another vet. His family put up a little makeshift memorial and VA maint guys tore it down. Said it had ants in it.
Opioid overdoses and fentanyl deaths are the result of CHOICES. Individuals CHOOSE to use. Bad choices can have bad outcomes. But it has the upside of removing undesirables from the gene pool.
After emergency surgery I got exactly 6 ‘Loritabs’ to treat the pain of having my abdomen sliced opened, guts rearranged, and stitched back together. If I wanted more I had to go IN PERSON to the hospital, again, and get another prescription for 6 more pills. They wouldn’t even let me call it in.
What a joke. Thanks government for more interference in the medical system.
If you support legalization of all drugs, then don’t do them in public, don’t expect welfare, don’t expect emergency services to come running with narcan.
In Bellingham, WA ( a very Leftwing small city) , Thecity council is discussing a law to ban open drug use in public spaces because of the negative effect it has been having on the local economy.
I just had this discussion with a pain specialist (who did the same anesthesiology residency I did only 3 years later) and she told me the evidence is stacking up that no, “medical marijuana” doesn’t help with pain and does, in fact, interfere with endogenous opioid receptors but in a BAD way.
I recall from my youth dopers arguing that because our brains HAD cannabinoid receptors, we were meant (nice teleology there) to use them.
Same has been argued for opium alkaloids.
I just don’t wanna get stuck without ANY as this arthritis wracks my body so I’ve been sure to plant a LOT of poppies at my farm.
I’ve been saying that for decades. Was a clinical consultant for an alcohol/substance abuse program, sat in on AA and ACOA meetings for almost as long and I realized, “hey, people quit using all the time. There IS no addiction, just choices” and made a lot of enemies. We forget there are a LOT of people dependent on the programs sustaining the myths of addiction.
“It’s made it increasingly difficult for legitimate patients with an ongoing medical need for treatment for severe pain to get relief from prescribed opioids.”
I hope the regulators responsible develope intractable pain and are told to take tylenol.
I could not care much at all what laws are made about public spaces, and of course no one should be operating a vehicle or such under the influence.
But as far as the right of a Citizen to numb their own pain?
Medicare/Medicaid had patients rate their doctors and one parameter was pain relief. Of course, doctors tried to get better ratings and that’s how the opioid epidemic got started.
Numbing their own pain? Please. Most of the problems we have on the streets of US cities due to drug use. We don’t really care what you do behind closed doors, but we don’t want to see it and we dont want to pay for the consequences. Ruin your own life if you want.
Numbing their own pain? Please. Most of the problems we have on the streets of US cities due to drug use. We don’t really care what you do behind closed doors, but we don’t want to see it and we dont want to pay for the consequences. Ruin your own life if you want.
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