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by turtlesdown11 2462 days ago
>All of this goes to show that there is very little evidence of any sort of over-prescription of opiates in America.

Ridiculous. It certainly does not, in any way, shape or form. Your "analysis" also excludes the very clear evidence that people get hooked on opioids from prescription pills and transition to black market products like fentanyl.

"The volumes of the pills handled by the companies climbed as the epidemic surged, increasing 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012. By contrast, doses of morphine, a well-known treatment for severe pain, averaged slightly more than 500 million a year during the same period." https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/six-takeaways-...
1 comments
dcolkitt 2462 days ago
Only 0.19% of opiate-treated chronic pain patients without a prior history develop any form of abuse or addiction[1]. And remember these are chronic-pain patients who take tolerance-escalating doses over years or even decades. Virtually no one develops an opiate addiction from following their medically prescribed treatment regiment.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18489635

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turtlesdown11 2462 days ago
>Virtually no one develops an opiate addiction from following their medically prescribed treatment regiment.

Completely false. You refer to data about a subsection of opioid prescriptions (chronic pain patients), and asserting broad claims that are not accurate.

"In just 10 months, the sixth-largest company in America shipped more than 3 million prescription opioids — nearly 10,000 pills a day on average — to a single pharmacy in a Southern West Virginia town with only 400 residents, according to a congressional report released Wednesday."

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/drug-firm-poured-m...

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dcolkitt 2461 days ago
Illegal diversion in the supply chain does not tell us anything about whether the healthcare system is over-prescribing pain medication.

Let's just take your example. What do you believe is more plausible? That a town of 400 people are collectively prescribed 10,000 pills a day by well-meaning doctors? Or that the pharmacy from your example is a front for organized crime to funnel prescription opiates into the black market?

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