[Correspondence] A public health approach to opioid addiction in North America

Keith Humphreys' Comment in The Lancet (July 29, 2017, p 437)1 describes the main drivers of the opioid crisis in the USA and advocates for global restriction of prescription opioids as an effective public health response to addressing the overdose epidemic. We argue that although the dominant narrative about the opioid crisis circulating around careless prescribing and unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies has some merit, it does not tell the whole story of the epidemic of opioid addiction in North America because it occurs among medical and non-medical opioid users.
Source: LANCET - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research