Misguided Opioid Narrative Takes On More Water

Jeffrey A. SingerThe seemingly unsinkable prevailing narrative that the opioid overdose crisis was caused by health care practitioners ‘hooking” their pain patients on opioids just took on more water.Researchers in the surgery departments at Case Western Reserve University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and American University of Antigua College of Medicine expected that opioids used to manage pain in trauma patients would lead to a  higher rate of injury‐​related deaths—including the subcategories of suicide, homicide, and “unintentional deaths” (a leading cause of which is drug overdoses). Using state‐​level data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Justice from 2006 to 2017, they used opioid shipment reports as a proxy for local opioid consumption, and converted all prescription opioids, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, into morphine‐​equivalent doses (MEDs).Reporting in the peer ‐​reviewed medical journalInjury,their findings confirmed what the CDC hadpreviously reported: “opioid deliveries increased through 2012 and then declined.” But more importantly, they found “Opioid MEDs did not show a consistent or statistically significant relationship with injury‐​related mortality, including with any subgroups of unintentional deaths, suicides, and homicides.”The researchers concluded:In every state examined,there was no consistent relationship between the amount of prescription o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs