New York Times Succumbs to The False Narrative Driving Opioid Policy-and Deaths

In an April 21  editorial, the New York Times succumbs to the false narrative reverberating in the media echo chamber that blames the opioid overdose crisis on doctors overprescribing opioids to their patients in pain. Even worse, the Times perpetuates a significant component of that narrative: the myth that such overprescribing can essentially be traced to nothing more than a single  letter to the editor by researchers at Boston University in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980 touting the low addictive potential of opioids when prescribed in the medical setting. In fact, numerous studies before and after that now “infamous” letter continue to demonstrate the low addictive potential of medically prescribed opioids. For example, 2010 and 2012 Cochrane systematic analyses show chronic non-cancer pain patients on opioids have a roughly 1 percent addiction rate, and a January 2018 study by researchers at Harvard and Johns Hopkins of more than 568,000 “opioid naïve” patients over 8 years who were given opioids for acute postoperative pain showed a total “misuse” rate of 0.6 percent. In a 2016 New England Journal of Medicine article, Dr. Nora Volkow, the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, stated, “Addiction occurs in only a small percentage of patients exposed to opioids—even those with preexisting vulnerabilities.” Furthermore, researchers at the University of North Carolina followed 2.2 million North Carolina residents prescri...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 24, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs