Did Prescription Opioids Cause The Overdose Epidemic?

Doctors Adriane Fugh-Berman and Jeffrey Singer debate the harms of prescription opioids

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Did Prescription Opioids Cause The Overdose Epidemic?

Has America's overdose crisis been caused by doctors over treating patients with opioids? 

That was the subject of this month's Soho Forum debate, held at the Sheen Center in downtown Manhattan.

Adriane Fugh-Berman defended the proposition, "America's overdose crisis is the result of doctors over‐treating patients with opioids." She's a medical doctor and a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center. She argued that the overdose crisis traces back to pharmaceutical companies convincing doctors that opioids were safe and effective, causing rising rates of addiction.

Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, took the negative. He argued that the rate of overdoses and the rate at which doctors prescribe opioids aren't correlated. The real culprit, he said, was drug prohibition.

This debate was moderated by Soho Forum director Gene Epstein.

Narrated by Nick Gillespie.

Comments

[Don't look at me!]

No, they did not.
Dangerous street supplied substitutes did.

[Overt]

And those substitutes only gained traction because the government forced patients away from doctors who could give them what they needed without resorting to the roach motels of opioids.

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[dekolaf877]

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[Overt]

Government caused this. You cannot look at the spike in opioid deaths starting in 2014 and ignore the reckless and cynical campaign against opioids undertaken by the Obama administration during the same time.
https://www.statista.com/chart/18744/the-number-of-drug-overdose-deaths-in-the-us/

Go to the CDC and you will see in their words exactly what was happening during this time. "Opioid dispensing peaked in 2012". Get that, everyone? We started tailoring off how many opioids doctors were prescribing, and lo and behold, within 2 years an unbelievable epidemic of black market opioid overdoses was underway.

I know many people who managed their pain (and likely some addictions) with the help of their doctor. But starting in the second Obama administration, their doctors were afraid to prescribe any more. And so they went out to the streets.

[Overt]

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html

CDC's own words on what they did.

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[Jerryskids]

When I was little, I was attacked by a pack of sharks and torn to bits, I just popped a couple of aspirins and was back at work in the acid mines the next day. You try telling that to people these days and they won't believe you. Bunch of pansies can't take a little pain.

[Chronic Pain Advocacy]

Perhaps you lack pain receptors where you were bitten or were in shock or received medicine you don't remember, or maybe you are just tougher than most. But people have died due to heart attacks or strokes from severe pain. No one gets excessive medication anymore. Do you want your children or family members to suffer 3rd degree burns or other causes of severe pain and not be treated for pain?

[Minadin]

Just because your chronic unavoidable pain makes every living moment a living hell, and you can't have any relief without using some drugs which some people might abuse in some cases to restore some quality of life, doesn't mean that, wait, what?

I'm 99% sure that Jerry here was being sarcastic. It's difficult to tell these days though.

[This Is The Zodiac Speaking]

Someone has a blocked critical sarcasm receptor

[BestUsedCarSales]

No one's going to argue that there's a drug use problem in our nation that, regardless of the quality of the drugs, indicates some sort of cultural malaise?
There's value of safer drugs for users so they OD less, there's also the fact that people should be able to make their decisions and accept their consequence, but there's a big part here about folks really using downers a lot as an escape. Many of them aren't doing it for pain management but rather recreationally.

[EdG]

Humans have been recreationally using drugs for at least 10,000 years. Other humans have been trying to ban or restrict recreational drug use for at least 9,999.99 years.

[Roberta]

But this is about the class of drugs known as opioids, not downers generally. Who's talking about downers as a significant societal problem in the USA now? Last country I heard mention of their being a big factor in was France, where they were being prescribed widely. USA, not for many decades have they been called a problem.

[TJJ2000]

Remember Prohibition?

[Minadin]

Hank Phillips might, I think Hihn is dead.

[Chronic Pain Advocacy]

CDC guidelines were written both in 2016 and 2022 by addiction specialists, without a single editor representing pain management. Needless suffering hasn't saved a singe life from illicit street drugs, and over-zealous prescribing regulations likely contributed to more deaths than they saved.

[Minadin]

I'm not sure if you are aware, but generally, the libertarian position is that you should be able to use whichever drugs you want to, for whatever reason you want to, and as long as you are not harming anyone else by using such drugs, the government should mind their own business.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, took the negative. He argued that the rate of overdoses and the rate at which doctors prescribe opioids aren't correlated. The real culprit, he said, was drug prohibition.

Huh, who do you vote for when they're both wrong, or one is only partially right?

[Winston]

1995: the medical establishment/government more or less instituted "pain as the 5th vital sign" and moved to the forefront of "medical conditions that NEED to be addressed" (driving 'care', and reimbursement/payment). Since then, greater than linear but not exponential increase in opioid use. Do the math. Government-induced "opioid epidemic".