Posted on 12/27/2016 7:44:49 AM PST by Mariner
OxyContin is a dying business in America.
With the nation in the grip of an opioid epidemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, the U.S. medical establishment is turning away from painkillers. Top health officials are discouraging primary-care doctors from prescribing them for chronic pain, saying there is no proof that they work long-term and substantial evidence that they put patients at risk.
Prescriptions for OxyContin have fallen nearly 40 percent since 2010, meaning billions of dollars in lost revenue for its Connecticut manufacturer, Purdue Pharma.
So the company's owners, the Sackler family, adopted a new strategy: Put the painkiller that set off the U.S. opioid crisis into medicine cabinets around the world.
A network of international companies owned by the family is moving rapidly into Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and other regions, and pushing for broad use of painkillers in places ill-prepared to deal with opioid abuse and addiction.
In the global drive, the companies, known as Mundipharma, are using some of the controversial marketing practices that made OxyContin a pharmaceutical blockbuster in the U.S.
In Brazil, China and elsewhere, the companies are running training seminars at which doctors are urged to overcome "opiophobia" and prescribe painkillers. They are sponsoring public campaigns that encourage people to seek medical treatment for chronic pain. They are even offering patient discounts to make prescription opioids more affordable.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said he would advise his peers abroad "to be very careful" with opioid medications and to learn from American "missteps."
"I would urge them to be very cautious about the marketing of these medications," he said in an interview. "Now, in retrospect, we realize that for many the benefits did not outweigh the risks."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Great testimony! I have had various bouts with chronic pain, I took Percocet a few days and decided I would rather feel the sledgehammer pain I am, now learning to live with. Pain so bad as to cause tearing, or throwing my life into a pill bottle. I can still work crircles around people half my age. Yeah it hurts, but the alternative is unthinkable.
Reefer madness.
Meanwhile, drugs are flowing here from our partners in crime, Afghanistan & Mexico. Do they (our twisted leaders) REALLY want to fight the drug problem? They are up to no good.
We’re talking about opioids generally, not oxycontin specifically.
Great post. Opiates are a BLESSING for acute pain. Post surgery or major accident, etc. They also allow sleep free of coughing. But they are for the shortest duration possible. 30 pills in a bottle is irresponsible prescribing. I’m glad they used to do that, because I have a stash locked up for just such emergencies. I’ve had two brain surgeries where they were necessary for a few days.
But I know when to stop taking: THE FIRST TIME YOU THINK, “I’m not in pain right now, but I will take one to prevent pain later.” Yes, this thought ALWAYS comes. And that is potential addiction speaking to you. Stop. I have never had problems while keeping to this formula.
I lost a friend very young (30s) to terminal liver cancer. She shot up opiates daily for pain. She was not addicted and there was no fear she would get addicted. Opiates should be prescribed freely to the terminally ill suffering from the pain of cancer etc.
Denying people pain relief because a subset of society can’t control themselves is idiotic. These same people abuse alcohol. The drugs & alcohol are not the problem, its the abusers.
Generally speaking following most routine surgeries you only need the pain meds 2-4 days, not 2 weeks which is long enough to get addicted.
Good grief! Glad you're not my dad or father in law's doctor. Pain will wear a man down. After a period of time utilizing Naproxen and or Ibuprofen, they become ineffective and thus the need for stronger pain medications.
It is absurd to deny folks, particularly folks in their senior years these pain medications. Heck, my FinLaw is in his 80’s and lives with late stage degenerative muscle disease...in pain ALL the time. It effects his personality, his quality of life. He resist taking pain medication as long as he can....he then takes a dose (not a handful like these freakin druggies) and it relieves the pain. Not completely, but takes the spike away allowing him to relax and enjoy folks around him.
Besides, he is in his 80’s. He deserves the best quality of life he can receive, even if that means having to depend on pain killers.
Similarly, my dad. Had a leg amputated at the knee. Always having phantom pains. Always going in for blockages in arteries. Restless leg syndrome and the like. My dad is always in pain. I've seen him without pain medication and with. W/o the medication, he is irritable, grumpy, uncomfortable. With it, he is relaxed, able to sleep at night, pleasant to be around.
We're not tawking about abuse here folks. The Nanny state wants to deny average citizens of these medications to save us from ourselves....just like the liberal control freaks they are. It is those folks who are abusing these medications that are driving all of this. Dedgum shame.
What will happen, just like any other push to fight drugs or alcohol or whatever...there will be a demand for black market drugs from Messy-co, China or where ever.
The gubbamint just can't seem to grasp, when folks have that need, that need WILL BE filled. How many billions have been spent of the “war on drugs”? It has been a failure.
Besides, the only folks that will be affected by this are those in acute/chronic long term pain within the middle class.
The poor own the black market. The rich get whatever they need. These are the simple truths.
No, your parent at 90 with his or her bone pain SHOULD be on opiates. We MUST honor our elders and their long lives and allow them the gift of less or no pain.
My perspective agrees with you.
Government has no role in this.
It’s a matter of personal choice. You either choose to be a junkie, or you choose not to.
I would prefer not to be acclimated to pain meds, but the alternative isn't worth discussing, and the fact is, my life is fine with the pain meds. For some, it is a clinically indicated necessity, and the idea of facing a life of agony because some pols decided to kick a political football around is horrific.
There is no place in a doctor-patient relationship for a politician.
PERIOD.
And not just that, isn’t the management of pain a patient questionnaire question (supplied metric by the government) that if your patients maintain you didn’t address their pain issue and your scores on that metric drop low enough, it can decrease Medicare reimbursement?
I took one after my hernia operation.
Never took another and just suffered thru the pain.
My body told me...”This is how addicts are created”
I have ongoing chronic pain that over the counter painkillers can’t touch. My doc put me on fairly low dose NORCO’s, which I took at nite, for pain that was just enough to keep me from sleeping. They work and I can miss doses without withdrawals.
But, but, but, I tried naproxen-sodium for my 1st time and they are like a miracle drug to me. Your mileage may vary.
If the drug is good for pain, acute pain, and that’s what it says to use it for, why can’t we be treated as adults and let us use it if needed, as needed? I’ve done Oxy for pain many times, after surgeries, for migraines, etc and have never taken it for more than three or four days. I never take more than directed, I’ve never been addicted to the “high” or the pain relief. I don’t get it. Because “some” will abuse, “all” can’t have it? Sounds the opposite of freedom loving people to me.
“It’s when they prescribe them for chronic back pain, 150 pills per month, that the problems arise.”
I just had my 8th surgery on my hand. The arthritis gives me non-stop pain. The vicodin helps me get through the night. During the day I use OTC meds to help get me through. For the pain meds, I have to go to a rheumatologist because no one else will prescribe them.
Some people experience an extreme euphoria upon their very first dose, and spend the rest of their lives remembering it.
They are the most at risk.
I’m lucky. All opioids make me feel very bad physically and I only suffer them when I absolutely need them. And stop as soon as I am able.
Opioids are the worst high anybody ever came up with, at least for me.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Not to mention painfully constipated. I know a fella that was on Loratab #10's for a year. The fellow remarked how he wouldn't take them anymore because even minor withdrawel + the pain being treated was >> just the pain being treated.
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