The War on Opioids Has Become a War on Patients

As Anne Fuqua recentlypointed out in the Washington Post, non-medical drug users accessing heroin and fentanyl in the underground drug market are not the only victims in the opioid crisis. Many patients whose only relief from a life sentence of torturing pain are also victims. That is because policymakers continue to base their strategies on the misguided and simplistic notion that the opioid overdose crisis impacting the US,Canada, andEurope, is tied to doctors prescribing opioids to their patients in pain.Unfortunately, political leaders and the media operate in an echo chamber, reinforcing the notion that cutting back on doctors prescribing opioids is the key to reducing overdose deaths. As a result, all 50 states operate Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs that track the prescribing habits of doctors and intimidate them into curtailing the prescription of opioids. Yetmultiplestudies suggest that PDMPs have no effect on the opioid overdose rate and may be contributing to its increase bydriving desperate pain patients to the dangers that await them in the black market.Last month Arizona joined the list of 24 states that had put in place limits on the amount and dosage of opioids doctors may prescribe acute and postoperative pain patients. These actions are based on the amateurmisinterpretation of the 2016 opioid guidelines put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are not evidence-based.And the Food and Drug Administration continues to promote the repl...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 12, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs