A New Strategy for Opioids–Ethical Prescribing

October 1, 2019

(Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine) – America’s got a problem with prescription opioids, and we know it. But nearly everything we’ve done in response has just hurt more people. Our disastrous relationship with opioid painkillers did indeed demand a rapid response. From 1999 to 2010, opioid prescriptions quadrupled. And during that same period, overdose deaths from prescription opioids also quadrupled. The 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills distributed in the U.S. from 2006 through 2012 contributed to almost 100,000 deaths during that period.