Future Retirement Success
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Investing
  • Stocks
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Investing
  • Stocks

Future Retirement Success

Investing

More Evidence That Opioid Policymakers Keep Aiming at the Wrong Target

by May 30, 2023
May 30, 2023

Jeffrey A. Singer

A new study released earlier this year adds more evidence to the mountains of evidence that policymakers trying to solve the overdose crisis have been aiming at the wrong target.

Researchers from the Dartmouth University School of Medicine recently published in the Annals of Surgery the results of a prospective clinical trial of 221 opioid naïve surgical patients prescribed opioids at discharge and followed for one year after surgery. Eighty‐​eight percent of the patients had cancer‐​related operations. Their surgeons prescribed opioids for pain control when they discharged them home from the hospital. The researchers accessed the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) to monitor the patients’ long‐​term opioid use.

Their findings: 15.3 percent filled opioid prescriptions 3–12 months after their initial surgery. Six percent of the time, it was because of pain related to the initial (“index”) operation, but 51 percent of the time, it was due to a new painful condition, and 40 percent from undergoing another surgery. The remaining 2.3 percent (five patients) filled opioid prescriptions one year later because of chronic pain due to recurrent cancer (two), a new medical condition (two), and a chronic abscess (one). Only one patient filled an opioid prescription 12 months post‐​hospital discharge for no specific reason. The researchers noted that patients disposed of their leftover opioids at a high rate. They concluded:

In a group of prospectively studied opioid‐​naïve surgical patients discharged with guideline‐​directed opioid rxs and who achieved high rates of excess opioid disposal, no patients became persistent opioid users solely as a result of the opioid rx given after their index surgery. Long‐​term opioid use did occur for other, well‐​defined, medical or surgical reasons.

This latest study adds to a January 2018 study in BMJ by researchers at Harvard and Johns Hopkins that examined 568,000 opioid naïve patients prescribed opioids for acute and postoperative pain from 2008 to 2016. The researchers found a total “misuse” rate (all “misuse” diagnostic codes) of just 0.6 percent.

It also supports the result of a prospective study of emergency room patients sent home with prescription opioids for pain and followed for six months, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine in May 2020. That study found that one percent (five patients) met the criteria for persistent opioid use by the end of the follow‐​up period. Four of the five patients still had moderate or severe pain in the affected body part six months after release from the emergency department.

As I and my co‐​authors reported in the Journal of Pain Research in January 2019, there is no correlation between opioid prescription volume and the non‐​medical use of or addiction to prescription opioids. And data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that the addiction rate among persons aged 18 and above has remained essentially unchanged throughout the 21st century, with the percentage addicted to prescription painkillers hovering at around 0.7 percent from 2002 through 2014, despite prescription rates surging to record highs in the early 2000s and then, after 2012, dropping more than 60 percent.

It seems that no amount of evidence will convince policymakers to abandon the false narrative that doctors treating their patients’ pain caused the overdose crisis. This refusal causes many patients to needlessly suffer while driving non‐​medical users of diverted black‐​market prescription pain pills to illicit fentanyl.

Lawmakers and policymakers, blind to the evidence that drug prohibition is the primary cause of the overdose crisis, have given us the worst of both worlds: patients inadequately treated for pain while overdose deaths soar.

0
FacebookTwitterGoogle +Pinterest
previous post
Sector Spotlight: Will Tech Take a Seasonal Break in June?
next post
The Continuing Effort to Deny that Libertarian‐​ish Voters Exist

You may also like

Australian Study on Opioid Prescribing is the Latest...

August 14, 2023

Three Reasons Americans Should Be Concerned about the...

April 28, 2023

UAW: Trump/Musk Exchange on Strikes Violated Federal Law

August 14, 2024

Introducing Centers of Progress: 40 Cities That Changed...

September 19, 2023

The New Deal and Recovery, Part 18: The...

July 29, 2022

Trump Administration Shouldn’t Designate Drug Cartels as Foreign...

February 5, 2025

Are Government Prohibitions Effective?

May 20, 2024

Risk of Another India-Pakistan Military Conflict

April 28, 2025

Emergency Spending and the Erosion of Congressional Fiscal...

May 23, 2024

Friday Feature: St. Ambrose Academy

September 20, 2024

    Get free access to all of the retirement secrets and income strategies from our experts! or Join The Exclusive Subscription Today And Get the Premium Articles Acess for Free

    By opting in you agree to receive emails from us and our affiliates. Your information is secure and your privacy is protected.

    Recent Posts

    • Rubio condemns assassination attempt on Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe

      June 8, 2025
    • Obama WH physician says Biden doc should have performed cognitive test

      June 8, 2025
    • Trump warns of ‘serious consequences’ if Elon Musk funds Democrats

      June 7, 2025
    • Musk jokes about reconsidering stance on Big Beautiful Bill after Schiff’s praise

      June 7, 2025
    • Musk deletes explosive posts about Trump and Epstein files

      June 7, 2025
    • House witness flips script on Dem who ambushed him during hearing with unearthed tweet: ‘Iceberg is ahead’

      June 7, 2025

    Categories

    • Business (8,152)
    • Investing (2,019)
    • Politics (15,570)
    • Stocks (3,136)
    • About us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms & Conditions

    Disclaimer: futureretirementsuccess.com, its managers, its employees, and assigns (collectively “The Company”) do not make any guarantee or warranty about what is advertised above. Information provided by this website is for research purposes only and should not be considered as personalized financial advice. The Company is not affiliated with, nor does it receive compensation from, any specific security. The Company is not registered or licensed by any governing body in any jurisdiction to give investing advice or provide investment recommendation. Any investments recommended here should be taken into consideration only after consulting with your investment advisor and after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company.

    Copyright © 2025 futureretirementsuccess.com | All Rights Reserved