Add Hepatitis C to the List of Unintended Consequences of Abuse-Deterrent Opioids

One year ago Cato published my policy analysis, “Abuse-Deterrent Opioids and the Law of Unintended Consequences, ” which provided strong evidence that reformulating opioids, so that they could not be crushed for snorting or dissolved for injecting by nonmedical users, only served to drive nonmedical users to more dangerous, readily available, and cheaper heroin provided by the efficient black market. The evidence included a RAND  study that found “a substantial share of the dramatic increase in heroin deaths since 2010 can be attributed to the reformulation of OxyContin” which replaced regular OxyContin in 2010. It also included a study from researchers at Notre Dame and Boston Universities that found:When we combine heroin and opioid deaths together, we find no evidence that total heroin and opioid deaths fell at all after the reformulation —there appears to have been one-for-one substitution of heroin deaths for opioid deaths.Now comes a  new RAND study that finds the abuse-deterrent reformulation of OxyContin led to an increase in cases of hepatitis C from IV drug use. As nonmedical users switched from OxyContin to injectable heroin, more became exposed to hepatitis C, transmitted by needle sharing.The study compared states with above-median misuse rates of OxyContin to states with below-median misuse rates before and after the drug ’s reformulation—from 2004 to 2015. Prior to the reformulation there was almost no difference in hepatitis C infection rat...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 5, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs