[grumpygresh]

Red Lawhern under comments: Josh, you are asking many of the same questions I am in my own published work (some of it here on ACSH). It is now apparent that the whole of US regulatory and law enforcement policy on prescription opioids is founded on a mythology. Prescribing didn't create our "opioid crisis" in the first place and most certainly isn't sustaining it now. Both the overdose trends and the demographics strongly contradict this assertion. I find it simply appalling that senior managers at HHS, CDC, FDA and DEA are willing to continue killing patients by misdirected suppression of medical opioids, when the "real" problem is street drugs and economic despair. This is madness.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Spiritual despair* not just economic.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

It’s the spiritual despair causing select people to commit mass shootings too. Not the guns’ fault.

[bk1000]

Isn’t it a vicious circle? Opioids are highly addictive, and people turn to street suppliers when the prescription no longer meets their needs, or isn’t renewed. Any time I was prescribed a narcotic pain killer there were no refills without seeing a doc. I have a friend going through recovery from being prescribed an opioid for more than a year. Some doctors are more lenient with prescriptions than others.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

1789 (61%) had heroin detected. 1322 (45%) had fentanyl detected. Only 39 (1.3%) of the decedents who had a prescription opioid detected in their body had an active (legal) prescription for that opioid on the day they died. In other words, 98.7% of the people who died and had a prescription drug in their body obtained that drug illegally (not by prescription).

How many of those who had heroin or fentanyl in their systems started with a prescription for Oxycontin? Patients get addicted to prescribed opioids, their prescriptions run out but their addiction is just getting started. This is NOT an argument from me against prescribing opioids - I know there are people who need them to deal with chronic and severe pain. Just pointing out that very few opioid addicts are going to die from the originally prescribed medication - their deaths are months or years down the road, and will not be from prescriptions.

[Ben Mugged]

Fentanyl is a pain medication and usually starts as a prescription but is highly addictive. Can cause respiratory distress and death when taken in high doses or when combined with other substances, especially alcohol.

[Still Thinking]

And even the 1.3% presumably died as a result of whatever painful condition led the opiate prescription (cancer, etc), and not from the opiate.

[kublia khan]

As weed becomes legal a new field of enforcement must open. The deep state will not permit thousands of DEA, FBI, CIA and thousands more of “the thin blue line” to become the new unemployed.
I'm laying in the bed at 1:30 in the afternoon because I know how much it will hurt to get up and start moving. But there are no doctors in my city who will prescribe opioid.

[Bob434]

bump

[bgill]

Not surprising.

[Truthoverpower]

Voluntary taking of pills 💊 is moronic

[Trumpisourlastchance]

We shouldn’t punish law abiding people who need prescription meds.

My vet father was 88 and had 6 cracked vertebrae in his back. He could only function with opioids, otherwise he was in terrible pain. He needed opioids and died of natural causes.

[familyop]

Yes, monstrous numbers of addicted party dopers—whole families of them in many cases—are associating themselves with legitimate patients.

[GailA]

What We Can Learn from Germany About the Opioid Crisis
November 01, 2019
By Roger Chriss, PNN Columnist EDS patient

Lots of Links as is usual for Roger Chriss articles.

https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2019/11/1/what-we-can-learn-from-germany-about-the-opioid-crisis?fbclid=IwAR3fTt6FStmK3pibP44xhU9-DGMGFogBtkIw-6bJ-tdK5n6elYy73a948AU

But illicit fentanyl is spreading westward, and from San Diego to Seattle a rise in overdose deaths has been seen throughout 2019, much of it caused by counterfeit medication. So the “gains” of last year may quickly evaporate. Fentanyl is cheap to make, easy to distribute, and getting into the entire drug supply. Meth and cocaine are re-surging, too.

The drug overdose crisis is evolving fast. Most overdoses involve multiple substances, often with inadvertent exposure or as a result of counterfeit or tainted drugs. And some are suicides. Now in the vaping outbreak we are seeing the impact of new technologies and new chemicals used in novel ways.

[familyop]

The answer is to allow them to check in to designated Democrat states. The following is one of several common enticements to their kind besides legalized and/or otherwise socially approved drugs.

California’s Prop 47 leads to rise in shoplifting, thefts, criminal activity across state
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3790738/posts

But as with roach motels, don’t let them check out. Set up barriers and checkpoints to prevent that.

[Steven Scharf]

This conclusion is admittedly flawed. It only looks at those who had an autopsy and toxicology report. They don’t do autopsies on people who die of known causes as noted in this discussion.

[MurrietaMadman]

Look on the bright side...

https://healthcare.utah.edu/publicaffairs/news/2018/05/nejm-opioid.php