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Let's not forget who to blame for this. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors. West Virgina is the most effected - http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/eric-eyre htt

Let's not forget who to blame for this. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors. West Virgina is the most effected - http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/eric-eyre http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/eric-eyre These articles shouldn't make you sad but MAD. "In six years, drug wholesalers showered the state with 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, while 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those two painkillers" That's 433 pills for every man, woman and child in the state.

humbleMouse 9y ago
Holy crap that's insane. That's 72 pills per year for each man woman and child.
- DanBC 9y ago
  The US uses more than 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/americans-use-far-more-opioids-than-anyone-else-in-the-world/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/ameri...
  - majormajor 9y ago
    Having recovered from surgery both with- and without-hydrocodone, it's not hard to understand why. It works really really well as a painkiller. I hope there is a solution that can address addiction and abuse without eliminating the drug itself. A less judgmental approach than spiking it with acetaminophen which just makes abuse do even more damage. I have similar mixed feelings about prescription stimulants. They work, but a lot of people end up abusing them.
- replicatorblog 9y ago
  I've seen this stat repeated quite a bit, but a person with chronic pain might take 2-4 pills a day right? Assuming 28 pills a week, that figure doesn't seem as crazy. Perhaps this is an insane quantity, but it feels like a stat that could be made to sound scarier than it is by using proper vocal intonation.
  - amigoingtodie 9y ago
    If that were really true, the drug distributors would not be settling with the state.
  - humbleMouse 9y ago
    I see the point you're trying to make - but have you ever taken 2-4 opiate pills per day for over a couple weeks at a time? This has a terrible ravaging effect on your body. It's not good for anybody, regardless of how much pain they are in. Furthermore, opiate tolerance goes up very quickly and that 2-4 pills can turn into 4-8 very quickly.
joe_the_user 9y ago
Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's hard not to see the opioid crisis as anything but an "ensemble effort" of everything that's falling apart in America - punctuated by the refusal of pundits and politicians to acknowledge these problems or move towards solving them. Edit: you could even say the willingness of drug companies to effectively transform themselves to dope dealers comes as a combination of for-profit medicine and regulatory capture, problems that have been festering for a while.
- gregmac 9y ago
  > Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's really not about that -- although that certainly contributes to some drug use. "The opioid epidemic began in the 1990s, when doctors became increasingly aware of the burdens of chronic pain. Pharmaceutical companies saw an opportunity, and pushed doctors — with misleading marketing about the safety and efficacy of the drugs — to prescribe opioids to treat all sorts of pain. Doctors, many exhausted by dealing with difficult-to-treat pain patients, complied — in some states, writing enough prescriptions to fill a bottle of pills for each resident." This is not about people in poverty turning to drugs -- this is about people in pain going to the doctor, and being prescribed an addictive, dangerous substance as treatment. "Over the past couple of decades, the health care system, bolstered by pharmaceutical companies, flooded the US with painkillers. Then illicit drug traffickers followed suit, inundating the country with heroin and other illegally produced opioids that people could use once they ran out of painkillers or wanted something stronger. "The other opioids arguably pose even bigger risks than painkillers. Heroin is generally more potent, so it’s more addictive and more likely to cause overdose. And fentanyl is even more potent than heroin, and it’s also often laced into illicitly sold heroin without a user’s knowledge — increasing the odds he’ll take a much bigger dose than he can handle. "The result is that as opioid painkiller deaths leveled off over the past few years, heroin and fentanyl deaths have rapidly increased." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/3/16079772/opioid-epidemic-drug-overdoses https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/3/16079772/opi...
  - 9y ago
tudorw 9y ago
"a study shows that drug manufacturers paid more than $46 million to more than 68,000 doctors over a 29-month period." https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/08/opioids-influence https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/08/opioids-influence "Most recently, the FDA announced that it will begin reviewing prescription opioid products that contain hydrocodone or codeine to treat children's coughs." http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/fda-turns-attention-to-childrens-medicine-in-battle-against-opioids/pharmaceutical http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/fda-turns-attention... When they are writing pop songs about it, it's probably time to do something... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYN14UfO-Uc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYN14UfO-Uc
- ameister14 9y ago
  That's crazy, if this is because of doctors, that shows $280 a year is enough to substantially influence a doctor making 500-2000x that.
  - wolco 9y ago
    I suspect most receive less than 20 dollars worth of free pills. Vacations and cash payouts to the doctors who prescribed the most is usually the game.
- tudorw 9y ago
  GlaxoSmithKline to pay $20 million to settle U.S. foreign bribery case. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-glaxosmithkline-corruption/glaxosmithkline-to-pay-20-million-to-settle-u-s-foreign-bribery-case-idUSKCN1202F3 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-glaxosmithkline-corrup... McKesson paying $150 million in prescription drug probe, halting sales from Colorado center. https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2017/01/17/mckesson-paying-150-million-in-prescription-drug.html https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2017/01/17/mckesson-... Several pharmaceutical executives and managers, formerly employed by Insys Therapeutics, Inc., were arrested today on charges that they led a nationwide conspiracy to bribe medical practitioners to unnecessarily prescribe a fentanyl-based pain medication and defraud healthcare insurers. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/pharmaceutical-executives-charged-racketeering-scheme https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/pharmaceutical-executives... Galena Biopharma Inc. to Pay More Than $7.55 Million to Resolve Alleged False Claims Related to Opioid Drug https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/galena-biopharma-inc-pay-more-755-million-resolve-alleged-false-claims-related-opioid https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/galena-biopharma-inc-pay-... National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in Charges Against Over 412 Individuals Responsible for $1.3 Billion in Fraud Losses. "Of those charged, over 120 defendants, including doctors, were charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-takedown-results-charges-against-over-412-individuals-responsible https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-ta...
kolbe 9y ago
I know everyone pictures the kid with a broken arm getting it set when they hear about socializing medicine, but all I picture is the US paying large corporations to make more people OD on opioids.
- mulmen 9y ago
  We don't have socialized (single-payer) medicine but we are still over-prescribing painkillers. Why do you think socializing medicine would change this? Do countries that have single-payer healthcare have more or less problems with heroin and prescription drug abuse?
  - lurker456 9y ago
    less, for several reasons - in the US system, treating symptoms instead of the underlying cause is easier for the doctor and more profitable in the long run. - "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; less patients that wait until pain is unbearable (due to its cost) which then need different treatment. - less conflict of interest that affect what doctors prescribe - there is only one buyer, with a strong negotiation position, potential profits are capped
    - tankenmate 9y ago
      Also with one buyer they are more keenly aware of when one particular drug or class of drugs spikes in usage.
    - ythn 9y ago
      Many of these points apply to socialized medicine as well. Take Germany for example: - "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; less patients wait until pain is unbearable and as a result doctors are inundated a lot of mildly sick people (who probably didn't need a doctor). - Treating symptoms instead of the underlying cause is easier for the doctor who is inundated with people that have mild sniffles and aches. Hence, a lot of my German friends were prescribed "spa time" in the hopes that it would clear itself up before getting a "real" prescription if spa time didn't work.
blfr 9y ago
Let's not forget who to blame for this. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors. It's almost certainly not true. This massive susceptibility to addiction is a larger social problem of alienation, lack of community and purpose, not getting a couple of pills from your doctor. Prohibition worked to some extent and would work tried again but it does not address the root problem.
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  >>not getting a couple of pills from your doctor. You're gonna have to back that claim up. All the evidence points to the claim that over-prescribing is a real epidemic. You're not wrong that there are larger social problems, but your argument essential boils down to "drugs addicts are drug addicts". The root problem is not being born a heroin addict, or not having a purpose in life, or not having a strong community. It's over prescribed pain medication pushed onto people for profits sake. "Sales of prescription opioids in the U.S. nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2014,1 but there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain Americans report.2,3 During this time period, prescription opioid overdose deaths increased similarly." https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/prescribing.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/prescribing.html
  - blfr 9y ago
    It's a famous story/finding. Vietnam soldiers who were actively addicted to heroin and came back to the States simply stopped. http://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits http://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits Obviously you can only become addicted to what is available and opiates are being made available through prescription. But the fact that so many people are susceptible to addiction is a completely different problem. The huge social changes of 19th century led to the same problem with alcohol. And well meaning activists did try to solve it by banning alcohol. Prohibition did work to some extent. But what really made a difference was an improvement in people's lives, a change in the environment for the better: more rooted, connected communities, less financial stress, migrant work, etc. Drug addicts are addicts because of their environment first and drugs second. (Some genetic disposition exists as well, of course.)
- 123e1daAdfafsdf 9y ago
swayvil 9y ago
People abuse that stuff when life sucks. So widespread opiate abuse is a symptom of a "sick society", right?
- mattbierner 9y ago
  > People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings, so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead — Breakfast of Champions
girvo 9y ago
Two doses of Narcan in the USA is $75. Three doses of it here in Brisbane are $5. You're right to blame the pharmaceutical industry.
zhengiszen 9y ago
Payback from the Afghanistan War ?

humbleMouse 9y ago

Holy crap that's insane. That's 72 pills per year for each man woman and child.

DanBC 9y ago
The US uses more than 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/americans-use-far-more-opioids-than-anyone-else-in-the-world/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/ameri...
- majormajor 9y ago
  Having recovered from surgery both with- and without-hydrocodone, it's not hard to understand why. It works really really well as a painkiller. I hope there is a solution that can address addiction and abuse without eliminating the drug itself. A less judgmental approach than spiking it with acetaminophen which just makes abuse do even more damage. I have similar mixed feelings about prescription stimulants. They work, but a lot of people end up abusing them.
replicatorblog 9y ago
I've seen this stat repeated quite a bit, but a person with chronic pain might take 2-4 pills a day right? Assuming 28 pills a week, that figure doesn't seem as crazy. Perhaps this is an insane quantity, but it feels like a stat that could be made to sound scarier than it is by using proper vocal intonation.
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  If that were really true, the drug distributors would not be settling with the state.
- humbleMouse 9y ago
  I see the point you're trying to make - but have you ever taken 2-4 opiate pills per day for over a couple weeks at a time? This has a terrible ravaging effect on your body. It's not good for anybody, regardless of how much pain they are in. Furthermore, opiate tolerance goes up very quickly and that 2-4 pills can turn into 4-8 very quickly.

joe_the_user 9y ago

Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's hard not to see the opioid crisis as anything but an "ensemble effort" of everything that's falling apart in America - punctuated by the refusal of pundits and politicians to acknowledge these problems or move towards solving them. Edit: you could even say the willingness of drug companies to effectively transform themselves to dope dealers comes as a combination of for-profit medicine and regulatory capture, problems that have been festering for a while.

gregmac 9y ago
> Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's really not about that -- although that certainly contributes to some drug use. "The opioid epidemic began in the 1990s, when doctors became increasingly aware of the burdens of chronic pain. Pharmaceutical companies saw an opportunity, and pushed doctors — with misleading marketing about the safety and efficacy of the drugs — to prescribe opioids to treat all sorts of pain. Doctors, many exhausted by dealing with difficult-to-treat pain patients, complied — in some states, writing enough prescriptions to fill a bottle of pills for each resident." This is not about people in poverty turning to drugs -- this is about people in pain going to the doctor, and being prescribed an addictive, dangerous substance as treatment. "Over the past couple of decades, the health care system, bolstered by pharmaceutical companies, flooded the US with painkillers. Then illicit drug traffickers followed suit, inundating the country with heroin and other illegally produced opioids that people could use once they ran out of painkillers or wanted something stronger. "The other opioids arguably pose even bigger risks than painkillers. Heroin is generally more potent, so it’s more addictive and more likely to cause overdose. And fentanyl is even more potent than heroin, and it’s also often laced into illicitly sold heroin without a user’s knowledge — increasing the odds he’ll take a much bigger dose than he can handle. "The result is that as opioid painkiller deaths leveled off over the past few years, heroin and fentanyl deaths have rapidly increased." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/3/16079772/opioid-epidemic-drug-overdoses https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/3/16079772/opi...
- 9y ago

tudorw 9y ago

"a study shows that drug manufacturers paid more than $46 million to more than 68,000 doctors over a 29-month period." https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/08/opioids-influence https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/08/opioids-influence "Most recently, the FDA announced that it will begin reviewing prescription opioid products that contain hydrocodone or codeine to treat children's coughs." http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/fda-turns-attention-to-childrens-medicine-in-battle-against-opioids/pharmaceutical http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/fda-turns-attention... When they are writing pop songs about it, it's probably time to do something... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYN14UfO-Uc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYN14UfO-Uc

ameister14 9y ago
That's crazy, if this is because of doctors, that shows $280 a year is enough to substantially influence a doctor making 500-2000x that.
- wolco 9y ago
  I suspect most receive less than 20 dollars worth of free pills. Vacations and cash payouts to the doctors who prescribed the most is usually the game.
tudorw 9y ago
GlaxoSmithKline to pay $20 million to settle U.S. foreign bribery case. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-glaxosmithkline-corruption/glaxosmithkline-to-pay-20-million-to-settle-u-s-foreign-bribery-case-idUSKCN1202F3 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-glaxosmithkline-corrup... McKesson paying $150 million in prescription drug probe, halting sales from Colorado center. https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2017/01/17/mckesson-paying-150-million-in-prescription-drug.html https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2017/01/17/mckesson-... Several pharmaceutical executives and managers, formerly employed by Insys Therapeutics, Inc., were arrested today on charges that they led a nationwide conspiracy to bribe medical practitioners to unnecessarily prescribe a fentanyl-based pain medication and defraud healthcare insurers. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/pharmaceutical-executives-charged-racketeering-scheme https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/pharmaceutical-executives... Galena Biopharma Inc. to Pay More Than $7.55 Million to Resolve Alleged False Claims Related to Opioid Drug https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/galena-biopharma-inc-pay-more-755-million-resolve-alleged-false-claims-related-opioid https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/galena-biopharma-inc-pay-... National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in Charges Against Over 412 Individuals Responsible for $1.3 Billion in Fraud Losses. "Of those charged, over 120 defendants, including doctors, were charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-takedown-results-charges-against-over-412-individuals-responsible https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-ta...

kolbe 9y ago

I know everyone pictures the kid with a broken arm getting it set when they hear about socializing medicine, but all I picture is the US paying large corporations to make more people OD on opioids.

mulmen 9y ago
We don't have socialized (single-payer) medicine but we are still over-prescribing painkillers. Why do you think socializing medicine would change this? Do countries that have single-payer healthcare have more or less problems with heroin and prescription drug abuse?
- lurker456 9y ago
  less, for several reasons - in the US system, treating symptoms instead of the underlying cause is easier for the doctor and more profitable in the long run. - "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; less patients that wait until pain is unbearable (due to its cost) which then need different treatment. - less conflict of interest that affect what doctors prescribe - there is only one buyer, with a strong negotiation position, potential profits are capped
  - tankenmate 9y ago
    Also with one buyer they are more keenly aware of when one particular drug or class of drugs spikes in usage.
  - ythn 9y ago
    Many of these points apply to socialized medicine as well. Take Germany for example: - "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; less patients wait until pain is unbearable and as a result doctors are inundated a lot of mildly sick people (who probably didn't need a doctor). - Treating symptoms instead of the underlying cause is easier for the doctor who is inundated with people that have mild sniffles and aches. Hence, a lot of my German friends were prescribed "spa time" in the hopes that it would clear itself up before getting a "real" prescription if spa time didn't work.

blfr 9y ago

Let's not forget who to blame for this. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors. It's almost certainly not true. This massive susceptibility to addiction is a larger social problem of alienation, lack of community and purpose, not getting a couple of pills from your doctor. Prohibition worked to some extent and would work tried again but it does not address the root problem.

nxsynonym 9y ago
>>not getting a couple of pills from your doctor. You're gonna have to back that claim up. All the evidence points to the claim that over-prescribing is a real epidemic. You're not wrong that there are larger social problems, but your argument essential boils down to "drugs addicts are drug addicts". The root problem is not being born a heroin addict, or not having a purpose in life, or not having a strong community. It's over prescribed pain medication pushed onto people for profits sake. "Sales of prescription opioids in the U.S. nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2014,1 but there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain Americans report.2,3 During this time period, prescription opioid overdose deaths increased similarly." https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/prescribing.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/prescribing.html
- blfr 9y ago
  It's a famous story/finding. Vietnam soldiers who were actively addicted to heroin and came back to the States simply stopped. http://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits http://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits Obviously you can only become addicted to what is available and opiates are being made available through prescription. But the fact that so many people are susceptible to addiction is a completely different problem. The huge social changes of 19th century led to the same problem with alcohol. And well meaning activists did try to solve it by banning alcohol. Prohibition did work to some extent. But what really made a difference was an improvement in people's lives, a change in the environment for the better: more rooted, connected communities, less financial stress, migrant work, etc. Drug addicts are addicts because of their environment first and drugs second. (Some genetic disposition exists as well, of course.)
123e1daAdfafsdf 9y ago

swayvil 9y ago

People abuse that stuff when life sucks. So widespread opiate abuse is a symptom of a "sick society", right?

mattbierner 9y ago
> People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings, so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead — Breakfast of Champions

girvo 9y ago

Two doses of Narcan in the USA is $75. Three doses of it here in Brisbane are $5. You're right to blame the pharmaceutical industry.

zhengiszen 9y ago

Payback from the Afghanistan War ?