"“The CDC is a very troubled agency, and it’s not just me saying that. There have been four separate, intensive federal investigations by the United States Congress – a three year investigation, 2001, 2002, 2003, by the United States Senate, Tom Coburn’s committee, by the Inspector General of HHS in 2008, by the Office Integrity in 2014. All of them have painted the CDC as a cesspool of corruption, of an agency that has become an absolute subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry, and that has become a sock puppet, a spokesperson, a shill for the industry.”
We also learn from the CDC data that the demographics of chronic pain and of overdose mortality are almost entirely different. The "over-prescribing" narrative doesn't work and never did. If prescribing was contributing to overdose deaths, we would expect to see higher mortality in age groups that receive more prescriptions. But there is no such trend.
In the past 17 years, death rates in youth and young adults have skyrocketed while opioid mortality in people over age 50 has remained stable at the lowest levels for any age group
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Moreover, the typical initiating substance abuser and the typical chronic pain patient are greatly different people. The typical abuser is a young male who has never seen a doctor, and who may have a history of mental health issues and family stress.
The typical chronic pain patient is a woman in her 40s or older. if her life is stable enough to see a doctor regularly, she will almost never be a substance abuser.
These trends are summarized and supported with graphics both here on ACSH and in an article in the June 21 edition of The Crime Report, titled "The Phony War Against Opioids - Some Inconvenient Truths". Readers can google the title to find the article.
Stop blaming doctors and their patients for causing it. Neither is guilty, despite the hype and misinformation we see in the MSM, Politicians, CDC (2018 Drug Threat Assessment of CDC), etc.
Government restriction of pain treatment (opioids) is driving doctors out of practice and people in agony to suicide.
Our mis-directed government's own statistics don't support the silly idea that our opioid addiction and mortality crisis is somehow dominated by prescription drugs.
It's not and it never has been.
It is easier to blame physicians for drug overdoses then to face the fact that most of the illegal fentanyl and heroin that enters the United States come up through the poorly protected Mexican border.
PROP, Makers of Oxycotin, CDC using in accurate numbers, Obama Adm., today's legislators are responsible for Thousands upon thousands of suicides and addicts over dosing on illegal fentanyl & heroin.
PROP is an acronym for Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. The group, which consists of a bunch of self-anointed opioid experts anti-drug activists on steroids, played a significant part in putting together the execrable "CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain — United States, 2016," which is the basis for new laws and policies which are so bad that they have managed to kill more addicts while at the same time legitimate denying pain the medications they need to exist.
Reviewers have rightly criticized PROP for using shoddy evidence in support of its findings. In the past decade, more than a dozen professional papers — including a systematic analysis known as a “Cochrane Review” of 26 other studies, and a 38-study review in the journal Pain — have debunked the idea that addiction routinely starts with legal use.
In most cases, it doesn’t; people who use prescription opioids properly and legally rarely become addicts.
When in fact, the ones who become addicted are those who start off using opioids for recreational purposes. The next stop is street drugs
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The other ignored horror of the equation is the cruel and needless suffering inflicted on blameless Americans who can no longer easily get pain medications. Just as addicts will do almost anything to feed their addiction, people in severe pain will do what is needed to escape it — even suicide.
But perhaps nothing illustrates the folly of government policies better than the rising number of pain sufferers who turn to street heroin because they can no longer get legal medication.
What a travesty.