The Rapid Increase in Illegal Heroin, Fentanyl and Cocaine Overdoses Blamed On Doctors & Their Patients Is Overlapped With The Obama Administrations, fast n furious guns for drugs, lack enforcement of the border, M13 gangs, lax in deportations, sanctuary cities, etc. etc.
How many people have died plus committing suicide because they can't get their pain meds, treated like addicts, forced to go to the streets for pain relief, suffer in silence, etc.
(17,087 they say, even that this reduced estimate is likely inaccurate.) This last statement is important.
CDC Researchers State Overdose Death Rates From Prescription Opioids Are Inaccurately High
In an article in the April 2018 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, four researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention report that the CDC’s methods for tracking opioid overdose deaths have over-estimated the number of those deaths due to prescription opioids, as opposed to heroin, illicitly manufactured fentanyl, and other illicit variants of fentanyl.
They called the prescription opioid overdose rate “significantly inflated.”
The authors of the AJPH article state, “Traditionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others have included synthetic opioid deaths in estimates of ‘prescription’ opioid deaths.
However, with IMF (illicitly manufactured fentanyl) likely being involved more recently, estimating prescription opioid–involved deaths with the inclusion of synthetic opioid–involved deaths could significantly inflate estimates.”
They suggest that under a new “conservative” definition—excluding deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl—the 32,445 prescription opioid-involved deaths that the CDC estimated occurred in 2016 would be revised down to 17,087.
The authors point out that the exact drugs involved in overdose deaths are not identified in 20 percent of death certificates, and the number of deaths due to diverted (stolen, smuggled, or sold by dealers) prescription opioids is unknown.
They also note that multiple drugs are involved in over half of their reported cases of prescription opioid overdoses—although other centers report multiple drugs involved in over 90 percent of overdoses. Because of this, they say, even that reduced estimate is likely inaccurate.
*(17,087 they say, even that this reduced estimate is likely inaccurate.)****
This last statement is important.
Policymakers seem intent on seeing doctors treating patients in pain as the source of the opioid overdose crisis.
And their focus has been on getting doctors to curtail prescribing opioids, while ordering a reduction in the manufacture of opioids (25 percent in 2017 and 20 percent this year) by pharmaceutical companies.
This has made a lot of patients, in and out of the hospital, suffer from under-treatment of pain.
Yet, the government’s own numbers have shown for years that the overdose crisis is primarily the result of nonmedical users seeking drugs in the black market created by drug prohibition.
This article from the CDC researchers provides yet another reason why policymakers should rethink their approach.
https://www.cato.org/blog/cdc-researchers-state-overdose-death-rates-prescription-opioids-are-inaccurately-high
More people die of STDs 23,000 in the US per year than overdoses of Physician Prescribed Opioids ( 17,029 people)!
And more people die from the flu 80,000 (2017) per year than opioid overdoses! Guess We need a war on the flu and STDs, instead of Physician prescribed opioids.
80,000 people died of the flu last winter (2017) in the US
The U.S. government estimates that 80,000 Americans died of the flu and its complications last winter — the disease's highest death toll in at least four decades.
In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Published 4:16 PM ET Wed, 26 Sept 2018
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/80000-people-died-of-the-flu-last-winter-in-us.html
According to the CDC, at least 2 million people in the U.S. become infected with STD related bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of those infections. Many more people die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection.Sep 19, 2013
Drug overdose deaths involving prescription opioids 17,029 in 2017. Since 2016, however, the number of deaths have remained stable.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates