Will US Drug Policymakers Blow It Again —This Time With Benzodiazepines?

In a recent  column, Maia Szalavitz reports on the rise in overdose deaths related to benzodiazepines (a class of tranquilizers including Xanax, Valium, and Ativan). According to a recent  study in JAMA, the number benzodiazepine prescriptions doubled in the US   from 2003 to 2015. And benzodiazepines are found in the bloodstream of almost a third of all opioid overdose victims—a nearly ten-fold increase since the beginning of this century. Szalavitz reminds us that the US is not the only developed country with an overdose problem from the nonmedical use of prescription drugs: Scotland has been contending with this problem for years, and the city of Dundee has been dubbed the “drug death capital of Europe.” Unlike the US, where fentanyl was found in 40 percent of overdose deaths in 2017, the main ingredients of Scotland ’s overdoses are benzodiazepines, involved in more than half the drug deaths in Scotland. Like the US, most of Scotland’s overdose deaths involve multiple drugs, including heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, and alcohol.US policy focused on decreasing opioid prescribing (high dose opioid prescriptions are  down 58 percent in the US since 2008). Likewise, Scottish policy emphasized and succeeded in reducing benzodiazepine prescribing. In both cases, the goal was to reduce the amount of the drug available for diversion to the black market for nonmedical users. And in both cases, the efficient black market filled the vacuum with illicit and more dan...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 14, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs