January 29th, 2020 | Written by - The Laurel ACLU Chapter
Opioids kill 130 Americans every day, one person every 11 minutes.
How did we get here? In the late 1990s, the American Pain Society launched a campaign to encourage treatment of pain symptoms. The Federation of State Medical Boards of the U.S. also introduced a series of Model Guidelines for opioid prescription, addressing both the appropriate circumstances for prescribing opioids and physicians’ fears of regulatory scrutiny. However, the well-intentioned guidelines had unintended consequences. The Joint Commission (TJC) now mandated that physicians provide adequate pain control, resulting in a heavy reliance on opioid medications. Hospitals feared that if new TJC benchmarks were not met, they would not receive federal healthcare funding. Moreover, the pharmaceutical industry downplayed the risk of addiction to prescription opioids. The massive marketing blitz conducted pushed the use of opioids as a humane treatment option, often paying physicians to corroborate their safety and effectiveness. As such, being unwilling to prescribe opioids as pain medication received heavy scrutiny: physicians had to deal with a number of hardships, from being labeled as inhumane to facing litigation for under-treatment. The culture change, driven by intent to ensure access to pain relief, opened the floodgates to the current opioid climate and widespread addiction.
Mark Jones of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center corroborates that although prescription drug monitoring programs have contributed to the reduction in opioid prescriptions by 8% and decreased prescription opioid overdose deaths by 12%, deaths by opioid overdose continue to escalate. To combat this accelerating crisis, the US Government declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency as of October 16, 2017. Recently, FDA public policy changes expanded access to and encouraged the development of abuse-deterrent opioid formulations, improved access to treatment options for opioid use disorder, and created support for alternative pain management modalities and other methods to reduce the risk of opioid addiction. There have also been state-level regulations limiting the prescribed doses of opioids and mandating the continued education of clinicians who write these prescriptions.
In 2018, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of Ohio received a case consisting of over 2,600 lawsuits from government entities; when combined, they demanded billions of dollars to confront the U.S. opioid epidemic. The pharmaceutical sector contends that opioids, such as Oxycontin, have been cleared by the FDA and have genuine medicinal value; however, the plaintiffs allege that, for over two decades, drug-makers have exaggerated the advantages and glossed over the chances of addiction. Ultimately, the case never went to trial and the evidence was never aired. The lawsuit was settled in Cleveland this past October and contained no admission of wrongdoing from the pharmaceutical companies and, to date, the addressed activity goes largely unchecked. The national opioid crisis has continued for decades and a hard line must be taken federally against corrupt pharmaceutical companies to end the perpetual increase of opioid addiction. Until such action is litigated, the crisis will continue to run rampant.
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