4 ms·

Death can be prevented in opioid overdoses if patients receive basic life support and the administration of naloxone soon after opioid overdose is suspected. Na

• zkms 10y ago
  > The root of the problem is doctor prescribed opiates. This is an extremely simplistic view that elides...most of what is going on, such as: 1) How poisoning/overdose deaths are reported by medical examiners -- something that varies a lot by region and over time 2) The increased introduction of fentanyl (and fent analogues) into the heroin supply 3) It doesn't factor crackdowns on pill mills and crackdowns (both from DEA and also self-directed) on opioids prescribing in general Opioid use is not inherently dangerous. Indeed, long-term use of pharmaceutical-grade opioids is remarkably safe (especially compared to other painkillers or other drugs such as alcohol) -- opioids don't tend to cause organ damage. There are several actual circumstances where opioid use gets dangerous to life and they are: 1) Dosage/concentration uncertainty 2) Contamination of a lower strength opioid (say, morphine or heroin) with a much higher strength one (fentanyl or fentanyl analogues) 3) Poly-drug use: combining opioids with benzos or alcohol to exploit synergistic effects When it comes to pharmaceutical-grade opioids, the doses are known and measured and there's no risk of contamination with unknown amounts of fentanyl analogues. Indeed, the mechanisms of drug prohibition actually incentivize the use of extremely high potency/volume opioids such as fentanyl. The third issue, poly-drug use, also is a consequence of prohibition -- the prices of opioids in the black market are artificially inflated (if you don't have the requisite permission slip for the drugs, you need to invest in all sorts of countermeasures to avoid being put in a cage and your product seized), so users need to economize, and this sadly happens by combining benzos with opioids, which can lead to fatal respiratory depression. This is also a symptom of prohibition and is not inherent to opioid use. Indeed, an overwhelming majority of so-called "opioid overdoses" involve other drugs (and most often it's either alcohol or a benzodiazepine). The DEA (and other flavours of doorkickers) targeting doctors and deputising them as law-enforcement agents who have to decide between the evil undeserving addicts and the deserving patients in pain is what has created this affair. Blame the prohibitionists, as this is a problem of their own making -- the crackdowns on "pill mills" and "overprescribing doctors" is what denies people a safe and legal source of pharmaceutical-grade opioids and forces them onto the black market of illegal, overpriced, and fentanyl-contaminated opioids (which leads, of course, to the deaths that are used to justify even more crackdowns).
  • acover 10y ago
    I meant the root of the opioid epedemic was not unemployment but prescription opioids. I am not an expert but the overdose problem is not just about purity/concentration. Even ibuprofen has nasty effects over the long term. "Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999,1,2 and so have sales of these prescription drugs.3 From 1999 to 2015, more than 183,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses related to prescription opioids.[1] [1] - https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html