Going After Scapegoats Is Easier Than Confronting The Truth

Jeffrey A. SingerYesterday the Department of Justicefiled suit against the giant retailer Walmart, accusing it of fueling the opioid crisis by encouraging its pharmacists to fill prescriptions –legally written by health care practitioners licensed by the Drug Enforcement Administration–they should have suspected of being inappropriately prescribed.The Justice Department seems uninterested in the fact that there isno correlation between the number of opioid prescriptions and the non ‐​medical use of prescription pain reliever or the development of opioid use disorder. And while the number of opioid prescriptions hasdropped 57.5 percent since 2010, the overdose rate has continued to climb, soaring to record high levels in thelatest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.In itscomplaint, the Justice Department continues to conflate “physical dependency” and “addiction,” seemingly ignorant of thedifference between the two. It also apparently ignores the words of Drs. Nora Volkow and Thomas McLellan of the National Institute on Drug Abuse who stated in a 2016 article in theNew England Journal of Medicine:Unlike tolerance and physical dependence, addiction is not a predictable result of opioid prescribing.Addiction occurs in only a small percentage of persons who are exposed to opioids — even among those with preexisting vulnerabilities.Older medical texts and several versions of theDiagnostic and Statist...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs