U.S. Doctors Prescribe Opiate Painkillers at Twice the Rate of any other Country

[n2doc]

Doctors in the United States lead the world in prescribing opioid analgesics, or opiate pain relievers (OPR). According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. physicians write 82.5 prescriptions for OPRs for every 100 persons in the country.

Expressed another way, there are 40,000 daily doses of OPRs consumed here for each million inhabitants per day. The second leading consumer of OPRs, according to a United Nations report, is Canada with 20,000 daily doses per million. By comparison, Mexico consumes only 85 daily doses per million inhabitants.

Many of these OPRs in the United States are apparently being consumed by veterans. According to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), more than 1 million vets take OPRs, half of them chronically. At least initially, these drugs are often prescribed by military doctors. In 2010, about 76,000 service members, about 14% of the force, were prescribed OPRs. The drug of choice in 95% of cases was oxycodone. Some of the prescribing has been done haphazardly; a report last year by the VA showed that some OPR prescriptions were being renewed without doctors seeing the vets.

The heavy prescribing of OPRs is resulting, not surprisingly, in overdoses. Patients at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals die from overdoses at a rate twice that of the general population. As a result, the VA has enacted new policy guidelines for OPR prescriptions and in 2013 started an Opioid Safety Initiative at eight clinics in the Minneapolis area. Since the program was started, there have been 50% fewer high-dosage opioid prescriptions written there.

more

http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/us-doctors-prescribe-opiate-painkillers-at-twice-the-rate-of-any-other-countryand-500000-veterans-are-dependent-140707?news=853608

[TwilightGardener]

1. But of course, if they UNDER-PRESCRIBE painkillers, they're cruel and causing

needless suffering. Having been a nurse, the narcotic issue is a tough one. You don't want to undermedicate and worsen someone's condition and cause suffering, and yet you don't want to cause or feed addicts, either--I've seen a LOT of drug-seeking behavior and very high narcotic tolerance levels that would put an elephant down, in people who don't have a correlating medical history for such usage...and you think, hmmm.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. When a friend's father died

he found several cabinets in the kitchen full of untouched bottles of such. Apparently his father didn't want to take the pain meds he was prescribed, but never bothered to stop the prescription deliveries, for decades, since I guess they were paid for by his insurance.

He had to get rid of something like a couple hundred bottles of unused meds, most of which were pain meds.

[hunter]

3. It's all about the distortions of an illegal market -- selling them on the street for huge profits.

The drug companies profit, the drug warriors profit, the drug gangs profit, the money launderers profit, a few crooked doctors profit, and the little guy who has a valid prescription can sell his safe pills and use unsafe heroin instead for profit.

These meds are diverted to the black market in many ways, from the manufacturer all the way down the distribution chain. Crooks of all sorts have a great incentive to disguise this activity as legitimate prescriptions. There are multiple weak spots in the regulatory system that are corrupt.

Is Rush Limbaugh in prison? Did anyone thoroughly investigate his supply chain? Does anyone really wonder why he is protected? It's all about the money.

If we stopped treating addicts as criminals, instead treated them as ordinary people with a medical problem, it would take all the big money out of this sordid business and prescriptions would be given without hesitation to people who actually need these meds.

As things are now there are too many people who have a legitimate need for these meds who don't get prescriptions.

Meanwhile a lot of other people are making big money selling these drugs on the black market to addicts who themselves have very strong incentives to keep their addictions secret because they often sell and trade drugs too.