Who are the 99%? –
Nov. 11, 2019 – The authors said that although a sharp uptick in prescriptions during the past two decades has led to more opioid use disorders in the U.S., their data shows that the vast majority of pain patients surveyed did not seek more prescriptions after their first round of medication. “Although it is becoming increasingly clear that problematic opioid use is associated with the duration and quantity of initial opioid prescriptions, the long-term risks of an opioid prescription for an individual patient with acute pain are poorly understood and inadequately quantified,” the authors wrote.
In 2017, more than 70,000 people died from drug overdoses, up 9.6 percent from the year before, making overdose a leading cause of injury-related death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prescription pills were involved in almost a quarter of those cases, but it’s unclear how many people mixed them with more deadlier substances before their overdose. The CDC reports “deaths involving” opioid prescriptions, methadone, heroin and others without accounting for overlap between the categories.
