Yahoo – AFP,
Nova SAFO, August 10, 2017
 |
| Doctors in the United States prescribe more opioids than in any other country -- enough to medicate every American adult |
When
55-year-old Sheila Bartels left her doctor's office in Oklahoma, she had a
prescription for 510 painkillers.
She died
the same day of an overdose.
Her doctor,
Regan Nichols, is now facing five second-degree murder charges -- one for each
patient who overdosed after she prescribed them opioid drugs, such as Oxycontin
-- prescriptions that can lead to addiction.
"Doctors
bear enormous responsibility for the opioid crisis," said David Clark, a
professor of anesthesiology at Stanford University who worked on a
government-sponsored panel that studied the crisis, and recommended new
training and guidelines for health care providers and regulators.
"We
didn't have (a crisis) until doctors became enamored with what they imagined to
be the potential for opioids in controlling chronic pain," Clark told AFP.
An
estimated two million Americans are addicted to opioid drugs -- many forced to
buy pills illegally when prescriptions run out. Some, in desperation, resort to
heroin and synthetic opioids smuggled into the US by Mexican drug cartels.
Ninety
people die every day in the United States from opioid overdoses.
More than
180,000 have died since 1999, including pop icon Prince, who passed away in
April 2016 at age 57 after an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a powerful
opioid painkiller.
Doctors in
the United States prescribe more opioids than in any other country -- enough to
medicate every American adult.
While those
physicians who are prosecuted for overprescribing make headlines, experts say
they are not solely to blame, and that the US health care system as a whole
must be held accountable for the country's spiralling opioid epidemic.
"Pharmaceutical
companies targeted general practitioner doctors, the ones who see most of the
people who have pain," Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine, whose state has
been hard hit by the crisis, told AFP.
"I
think they certainly were misled, and they were told things that were not
true."
 |
Pop icon
Prince passed away in April 2016 at the age of 57 after an
accidental overdose
of fentanyl, a powerful opioid painkiller
|
Years in
the making
The problem
is not a new one -- it began two decades ago, as doctors were being taught to
better manage their patients' pain and drug companies were touting the efficacy
of opioid painkillers.
The
painkillers -- meant only for patients in the most dire need -- started getting
into the hands of those with chronic conditions that had been treated with
simple over-the-counter drugs like aspirin.
And they
didn't know they were addictive.
"You
had people with a simple toothache, or knee surgery, or back surgery, that were
on these opioids for too long a period of time or prescribed a higher dosage
than they needed," said Robert Ware, chief of police in the town of
Portsmouth, Ohio, which became a sort of ground zero for the crisis.
As more and
more people were getting addicted, "pill mills" began to pop up in
Portsmouth and across the nation to meet demand. These clinics were run by
doctors who would prescribe opioid drugs to anyone who could pay.
In
Portsmouth, a struggling Ohio town bordering two other states where the steel
industry was once king, Ware was seeing pill mills become part of the economy,
as addicts from nearby states traveled there to get their fix.
Eventually,
state regulators and local law enforcement shut down the pill mills by
arresting doctors and requiring that clinics be associated with established,
reputable medical programs.
The Justice
Department has promised a further crackdown on unscrupulous doctors and
pharmacists.
On Tuesday,
President Donald Trump -- hosting a meeting on the crisis during his summer
vacation -- suggested more prosecutions as a whole may be necessary.
 |
An
estimated two million Americans are addicted to opioid drugs -- many forced
to
buy pills illegally when prescriptions run out and some, in desperation, resort
to
heroin and synthetic opioids
|
Arrests
not the only answer
But in
Portsmouth, Ware said the community has learned a tough lesson.
"You
cannot arrest your way out of this problem," the chief said.
The town's
opioid addicts came from a cross-section of society, because most got hooked
through legitimate prescriptions.
And addicts
needed help to recover over the long run.
So
Portsmouth beefed up its health care offerings and addiction treatment -- and
went from being a haven for pill mills to a refuge for recovery.
Overdoses
there are now trending downward, in contrast to the rest of the country, Ware
said.
"We
are kind of ahead of the curve in getting out of the problem," he said.
A new target
Across the
country, overall drug overdose deaths are rising to new highs -- 60,000
estimated fatalities in 2016. Certain states, like Ohio and West Virginia, have
been harder hit than others.
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