Civil Rights Case Gives Hope to Pain Patients

By Richard Dobson, MD, Guest Columnist

People with chronic disabling pain frequently complain that doctors discharge them from their practice because of the medications they take. Sometimes doctors refuse to accept patients who are taking opioid pain medications, even though the medications treat a legitimate medical condition.

There may be hope that such actions will be considered violations of the civil rights of patients.

This week the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) signed a formal agreement with Selma Medical Associates, a large primary care practice in Virginia, that may open the door for people with chronic pain to regain their full access to medical care.

Selma Medical refused to schedule a new patient appointment for a man who was taking the addiction treatment drug Suboxone. He filed a civil rights complaint asserting that his rights were violated because has a disability.

According to the complaint, Selma Medical “regularly turns away prospective new patients who are treated with narcotic controlled substances such as Suboxone.”

The DOJ and Selma Medical settled the complaint out-of-court. The full agreement can be read here.

In essence, Selma Medical agreed to stop discriminating on the basis of disability, including opioid use disorder (OUD). The settlement identifies several specific ways that Selma Medical was violating the civil rights of people with disabilities.

“By refusing to accept the Complainant for a new family practice appointment solely because he takes Suboxone, Selma Medical discriminated against him by denying him the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of Selma Medical.

By turning away the Complainant and other prospective patients who are treated with narcotic controlled substances, including Suboxone, Selma Medical imposed eligibility criteria that screen out or tend to screen out individuals with OUD.

Further, Selma Medical failed to make reasonable modifications to policies, practices, or procedures, when such modifications are necessary to afford such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations to individuals with disabilities.”

In the agreement, Selma Medical agreed to stop discriminating now and in the future. The staff and administration are also required to undergo intensive training on the implementation of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

Importantly for pain patients, the agreement applies to people taking “narcotic medications” for any reason and is not limited to people who are taking Suboxone for OUD. The agreement does seem to imply that people taking opioid medications also have their civil rights violated if they are refused medical care on the basis of their diagnosis and their use of opioids.

A former staff attorney in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division agrees.  

“This formal settlement agreement from DOJ affirms that discrimination in access to medical treatment based solely on an individual’s use of a particular medication — in this case, a narcotic controlled substance — may violate the law,” says Kate Nicholson, a pain patient and civil rights attorney who helped draft federal regulations under the ADA.

Anyone who has chronic pain and who is discharged from a practice or refused admission to a medical practice should let the medical staff know that this is a violation of the ADA. Show them the agreement between Selma Medical and the DOJ. Then if the medical practice still refuses care, file a formal complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. Instructions on filing can be found here.

As part of the settlement agreement, Selma Medical had to pay $30,000 to the complainant for “the discrimination and the harm he has endured, including, but not limited to, emotional distress and pain and suffering.” Selma Medical also had to pay a civil penalty of $10,000.

It seems to me that the substance of this agreement gives real hope to the chronic pain community that discrimination based on disability, even if the disability is based on pain, is illegal and violates their civil rights.

Richard Dobson, MD, worked as a physician in the Rochester, New York area for over 30 years, treating and rehabilitating people suffering from chronic pain, mostly as the result of work or motor vehicle accidents.  He is now retired.  

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

FDA Pushing for Over-The-Counter Sales of Naloxone

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has launched an “unprecedented” effort to support over-the-counter sales of naloxone, an overdose recovery drug credited with saving thousands of lives. The FDA has developed new drug labeling — at taxpayer expense — to encourage drug makers to start selling naloxone without a prescription.

“This is the first time the FDA has proactively developed and tested a DFL (drug facts label) for a drug to support development of an OTC product. We proactively designed, tested and validated the key labeling requirements necessary to approve an OTC version of naloxone and make it available to patients,” FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, said in a statement.

“I personally urge companies to take notice of this pathway that the FDA has opened for them and come to the Agency with applications as soon as possible.”

FDA proposed label for evzio

Curiously, one of the labels the FDA developed would support sales of Evzio, a controversial naloxone auto-injector that sells for about $3,700.

A recent U.S. Senate report accused Kaleo – the company that makes Evzio – of inflating its price by 600% to “capitalize on the opportunity” of a “well established public health crisis.” The report estimates Medicare and Medicaid paid over $142 million in excess costs to Kaleo for its Evzio injectors.

Kaleo has since announced plans for a generic version of Evzio to be available in mid-2019 at a reduced price of $178.

The FDA has also developed an OTC label for Narcan, a naloxone nasal spray that sells for about $135.

Last month, federal health officials called naloxone an “essential element” of government efforts to reduce deaths from opioid overdoses, and urged doctors to co-prescribe naloxone to pain patients talking relatively modest doses of 50 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) or more per day.

The drumbeat for naloxone comes at a time when sales are already booming. According to the healthcare data firm IQVIA, naloxone sales grew from $21 million in 2011 to over $274 million in 2016, and are projected to reach $500 million by 2020. Many of these purchases are made through Medicare or Medicaid, or government funded grants that supply naloxone at no cost to first responders, hospitals and addiction treatment clinics. 

According to one estimate by the CDC, naloxone reversed over 26,000 opioid overdoses from 1996 to 2014, and advocates say the drug has likely prevented thousands of deaths since then.

Earlier this month, naloxone was credited with saving a dozen lives at a suspected fentanyl mass overdose that left one man dead in Chico, California.

“Without that, I’m convinced that we would have had certainly four or five, if not more, additional fatalities,” Chico Police Chief Michael O’Brien told The Los Angeles Times. “There’s no doubt it saved lives.”

Is Naloxone Increasing Opioid Abuse?

There’s no doubt naloxone saves lives, but some researchers say the drug has had little effect on the opioid epidemic and may in fact be making it worse.

In a study recently published by SSRN, an open access online journal, two economics professors said naloxone may raise the risk of an overdose by providing a “safety net” to opioid abusers -- in effect giving them a second chance to abuse more drugs. In an anlaysis of Google search results, they found anecdotal evidence that drug crimes and overdoses increased in states where there was easy access to naloxone.

“Expanding naloxone access increases opioid abuse and opioid-related crime, and does not reduce opioid-related mortality. In fact, in some areas, particularly the Midwest, expanding naloxone access has increased opioid-related mortality. Opioid-related mortality also appears to have increased in the South and most of the Northeast as a result of expanding naloxone access,” wrote Jennifer Doleac, PhD, Texas A&M University, and co-author Anita Mukherjee, PhD, University of Wisconsin.

“Our results show that broad naloxone access may be limited in its ability to reduce the epidemic’s death toll because not only does it not address the root causes of addiction, but it may exacerbate them.”

Doleac and Mukherjee say naloxone may give drug abusers a false sense of security, encouraging them to seek “a higher high” with more dangerous drugs like illicit fentanyl. The researchers said public health officials should prepare for these unintended consequences by offering addiction treatment along with naloxone.

Government-supported efforts to increase naloxone sales are not confined to the federal government. As PNN has reported, a new state law in California requires doctors to “offer” naloxone prescriptions to pain patients deemed at high risk of an opioid overdose. Nothing in the law requires patients to obtain naloxone, yet some pain sufferers say they are being “blackmailed” by pharmacists who refuse to fill their opioid scripts unless naloxone is also purchased. Patients around the country report similar experiences.   

How Hollywood Romanticizes Addiction

By Lynn Webster, MD, Guest Columnist

We all love good storytelling. Cinema can mirror the real world or create a universe of its own. Movies can transport us to another world, beyond ordinary consciousness and emotions. They can be an agent for positive cultural change, or they can spread false narratives that are largely adopted by society. They can help solve our problems, or they can exacerbate them.

Two films that were released this past year -- "Ben Is Back" and "Beautiful Boy" -- are examples of movies that tell heart-wrenching stories, but fail to provide solutions. Instead, they reinforce unhelpful narratives that we glean from the news media and politicians.

Both are mainstream films with wide distribution and built-in audiences due to their talented casts and subject matter. They both tackle a theme that often works well for Hollywood: a child in life-threatening danger.

Each of these films focuses on the drama of a troubled young person who struggles with addiction. In both cases, the addiction creates a tragedy that feeds a romantic thread.

As a frequent film goer, I appreciate both movies' artistic delivery. However, their messages don’t necessarily reflect the realities of addiction in America. The movies perpetuate stereotypes and demonstrate that the color (pun intended) of addiction matters.

Through both of these films, Hollywood provides viewers with romantic views of addiction that are played out as love stories between parents and their children.

Josephine Livingstone, culture staff writer at The New Republic, recently wrote, “To make a movie about drugs almost guarantees that you romanticize them, because otherwise there would be no narrative at all -- just long nights, empty bank accounts, and a feeling like cold hunger.” 

COURTESY ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS

"Ben is Back" stars Julie Roberts as the loving but frightened mother and Lucas Hedges (Ben) as a young man in an upper middle-class white family.

Ben is polite and likeable. His only apparent flaws are the behaviors associated with his addiction to opioids. The audience is primed to wonder how this could happen to an All-American boy. This young man and his family surely couldn't be responsible for the problem. 

The film poignantly blames a senile physician for initiating the boy’s addiction years earlier by prescribing Ben an opioid following a painful injury. The doctor is portrayed as the villain who pushes Ben toward a path of destruction. 

This works because the characters in "Ben Is Back" are of the same demographic and ethnicity as most of the viewers who would watch the movie. The film reinforces the clichés the audience has come to believe about addiction and its etiology. 

History tells us that poor inner-city minority members, by contrast, are usually blamed for their addictions. If the film starred a black or brown young man, the plot would have likely focused on the criminal activity and character flaws of the drug abuser. 

Julia Roberts told USA Today that she was able to relate to the problem of watching a family member suffer from addiction because, in real life, her older brother had suffered from the disease. However, Roberts acknowledges, "The position of the mother in this film is very different from a sister," reinforcing the parent/child love theme.  

The other film, "Beautiful Boy," is based on a true story. In contrast to "Ben Is Back," the movie is about a relationship between a father and his son. Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet (Nic) play the father and son. As Rolling Stone says, "It’s the two leads who, thanks to their astonishing, ripped-from-the-guts performances, make this movie a standout." 

Nic has a great relationship with his father. The father introduces his son to marijuana, which the movie inaccurately suggests is the seed to Nic's eventual use of methamphetamine.  

The story is told from the father's point of view. The father blames himself because he buys into the myth that marijuana is a gateway drug. Unfortunately, many movie goers probably also inaccurately believe that using marijuana could lead to meth addiction. 

Meth is not an opioid. However, the story line is similar to that of "Ben Is Back." Nic is a good white kid from a loving home, but he, too, is caught in a web of addiction. 

While Nic's story is emotionally riveting, we know that he lives a privileged life. Like Ben, Nic is a sympathetic character.   

COURTESY AMAZON STUDIOS

These two movies blame outside causes for addiction. The movies fail to explore the real motivators to using drugs. Both characters acknowledge, in a discreet and almost offhand way, that they use drugs to feel alive. This subtlety is a huge statement. It describes the reason for their drug use that most viewers probably miss. 

Why should these two movies matter so much to us?  

These films may be entertaining, but they fail to tell the true story of addiction. Addiction is not sentimental. It is a tragedy, regardless of color. There are no tidy endings in real life. Propagating misleading narratives about addiction has made it more difficult for people in pain to be treated. 

If Hollywood producers are going to make films about addiction that don’t feed false narratives, they will have to stop romanticizing addiction.  

Lynn R. Webster, MD, is a vice president of scientific affairs for PRA Health Sciences and consults with the pharmaceutical industry. He is a former president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. Webster is the author of “The Painful Truth: What Chronic Pain Is Really Like and Why It Matters to Each of Us.” You can find him on Twitter: @LynnRWebsterMD. 

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

How Chronic Pain Led Me to Illegal Drugs

(Editor's note: This column was written by someone I've known for several years and consider a friend. The author is intelligent, college educated and works full time. They also have a progressive and incurable chronic pain condition. Like a growing number of pain patients who are undertreated or have lost access to pain care, my friend has turned to illegal drugs for pain relief. For obvious reasons, we are not disclosing the author's name.) 

For me, it started with borrowing a couple hydrocodone pills from my uncle, who’d just had surgery and didn’t finish his prescription.  

Technically illegal? Yes. Illegal illegal? Not really. That’s what I told myself.

I run out of pain pills early every month — because they are prescribed to take one every six hours and only last about three. So I was happy to have a few more to get through those last few days before my refill.  

I always need more though, because the pain is always there. So I started to swap pills with my cousin, who also has chronic pain.  “Here, take 10 of mine today,” I’d offer.  

Then a few days later, I’d go back with, “Okay, now I need to borrow some pills from you. Maybe just five to get me through until my next refill?”  

I know she would never consider those drug deals. She would never consider herself a dealer. She goes to church for goodness sake. 

Eventually, I started to pay a little cash for 5mg pills from a friend of a friend, because it seems only fair to give him something in return.

I guess that’s about as “drug deal” as drug deals get. Here is money for you in exchange for drugs for me. There’s no way to really argue that.   

But it still didn’t feel like a drug deal. He’s doing me a favor, so I’m doing him a favor. We’re working professionals. We’re not meeting in a dark alley. Nobody has a gun on them. We’re just helping each other.

Then I started buying marijuana to see if it would help with the pain.  I felt like marijuana was easier to get than my monthly pain pill prescription. And as long as I had the money, I could get as much as I wanted.  

I bought it from an old high school friend, who has a quiet house in the country and always invites me over for dinner. It felt more like buying homemade jewelry than buying homemade drugs. And she’d send me home with marijuana edibles that didn’t seem all that different than any other muffins my friends would bake for me.  

Recreational marijuana isn’t legal where I live, but it is in a lot of other places, so it’s still easy to justify this one to myself. My state is just a little behind. We’ll catch up. And soon buying an eighth won’t be much different than buying a pack of cigarettes.  

The marijuana doesn’t help me much other than putting me to sleep, so I hardly ever buy it. But if it did work — if it helped anywhere close to the way hydrocodone does — I would become a regular customer.  

Since I didn’t like it or use that much, I ended up selling some leftover marijuana to a friend’s uncle. That’s about when I officially became a dealer myself, I suppose.  

And now, I’m regularly buying extra hydrocodone from the local drug dealer. I meet up with him in the alley behind his apartment. He does not make drug dealing look glamorous. He never has enough money for his phone bill, he always needs a ride, and I’m pretty sure he uses the money I give him to buy heroin.  

I tell myself that most people would do what I was doing if they were enduring the kind of daily, debilitating chronic pain that I have. It’s either this or suicide.  

I try to get my doctor to increase my prescription and hold my breath every time they drug test me. So far, I’ve always passed. And so far, my prescription has yet to last me until the end of the month.  

All these illegal drugs get expensive. $10 for one 10mg hydrocodone. You can whip through $300 a week easily. Hydrocodone is more expensive than heroin and even harder to get.  

Sometimes I wonder if I should just take the leap and buy $20 worth of heroin, which would be more potent than $400 worth of hydrocodone pills. I know where I can get it now, thanks to my new connections to the local dealer.  

But so far, I’ve resisted. Not worth the possible side effects. Not worth the hassle. And not worth the potential legal issues. If I buy hydrocodone, I can slip them into one of my pill bottles with a legitimate label and the cops would have a hard time proving they weren’t mine. Heroin is a little more difficult to hide. 

I know some heroin users and they aren’t like the ones in the movies. They aren’t shooting up in dark alleys. They’re doing it in the morning to combat chronic pain. They’re doing it so they can go to work. They’re doing it because their legitimate doctor cut them off. They’re doing it so they can live their lives.  

And that’s what I'm doing, too. I bought 10 hydrocodone this morning, because I needed something to get me through the work day. Without opioid pain medication, I wouldn’t even be able to check my emails.  

I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that when you’re in pain, you’ll do anything to make it stop. And as long as the only way to make it stop comes down to buying illegal drugs or killing myself, I’ll keep choosing illegal drugs — and pray that it doesn’t lead to me accidentally killing myself.  

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Feds Urge Doctors to Co-Prescribe Naloxone

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Pain patients taking relatively modest doses of opioid medication should be co-prescribed naloxone, according to a recommendation released this week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Naloxone is an overdose recovery drug administered by injection or nasal spray that rapidly reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. It has been credited with saving thousands of lives, although recently there has been controversy over a company exploiting demand for the drug by raising the cost of its naloxone injector over 600 percent.

“Given the scope of the opioid crisis, it’s critically important that healthcare providers and patients discuss the risks of opioids and how naloxone should be used in the event of an overdose,” said Adm. Brett Giroir, MD, assistant secretary for health and senior advisor for opioid policy at HHS.

“Co-prescribing naloxone when a patient is considered to be at high risk of an overdose, is an essential element of our national effort to reduce overdose deaths and should be practiced widely.”

But the “guidance” released by HHS could involve millions of patients who are not necessarily at high risk and have been taking opioids safely for years.  It urges doctors to “strongly consider” prescribing naloxone to patients under these circumstances:

• Patients prescribed opioids at a dose of 50 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) or more per day

• Have respiratory conditions or obstructive sleep apnea (regardless of opioid dose)

• Have been prescribed benzodiazepines (regardless of opioid dose)

• Have a mental health or non-opioid substance use disorder such as excessive alcohol use

• Are receiving treatment for opioid use disorder

• Have a history of illegal drug use or prescription opioid misuse

The HHS guidance was issued days after an FDA advisory committee voted 12 to 11 in favor of adding language to opioid warning labels recommending that naloxone be co-prescribed.  Some panel members objected to the labeling because of the additional cost involved and because it does not address deaths caused by illicit opioids, which account for the vast majority of opioid overdoses.

The guidance notes that most health insurance plans, including Medicare and Medicaid, will cover at least one form of naloxone. For patients without insurance, the guidance suggests contacting a state or local program that may supply naloxone for free or at low cost.

Naloxone costs only pennies to make and syringes containing generic versions of the drug typically cost about $15 each. But formulated and branded versions that have a more sophisticated delivery system are much pricier. According to Health Care Bluebook, a package of two nasal sprays of naloxone sold under the brand name Narcan will cost about $135.  Evzio, a kit that contains two auto-injectors of naloxone, retails for about $3,700.   

A recent U.S. Senate report found that Kaleo, a privately-owned drug maker, jacked up the price of Evzio by over 600% to “capitalize on the opportunity” of a “well established public health crisis.” As a result, the report estimates the U.S. government paid over $142 million in excess costs to Kaleo for prescriptions covered by Medicare.  

The new HHS guidance mirrors that of the 2016 CDC opioid guideline, which encourages physicians to consider prescribing naloxone to pain patients on “higher opioid dosages” of 50 MME or more.

“I’m personally against it, because I don’t think most patients who require opioids for pain management are at risk of overdose,” said Andrea Anderson, Executive Director, Alliance for the Treatment of Intractable Pain (ATIP).  “I also don’t think naloxone helps unless you’re with other people, which makes more sense for those who are using illicit opioids rather than those who rely on opioids for routine pain relief. 

“I don’t think the government should require patients to buy medications for which they do not have a proven need. This sounds like another one of those good ideas in theory but poor in practice.”

Fentanyl and Heroin Linked to 70% of Overdoses

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released another report today documenting the changing nature of the overdose crisis and the decreased role that prescription opioids have in drug deaths.  About 70% of fatal overdoses in 2016 involved either illicit fentanyl or heroin.

CDC researchers used “literal text analysis” to study death certificates from 2011 to 2016, looking for drugs listed as the cause of death, significant conditions contributing to that death, and a description of how the death occurred.  Alcohol, nicotine and other non-drug substances were not included in the analysis.

Researchers found that the opioid painkiller oxycodone was the most frequently mentioned drug involved in 2011 overdoses, but by 2016 oxycodone had fallen to 6th place, behind fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam (Xanax).

TOP 10 DRUGS MENTIONED IN 2016 OVERDOSE DEATHS

Source: CDC

CDC researchers noted that many overdose deaths involve multiple drugs.

“We’ve had a tendency to think of these drugs in isolation. It’s not really what’s happening,”  lead author Holly Hedegaard, PhD, told the Huffington Post.

For example, fentanyl and cocaine were mentioned in nearly 4,600 deaths, while oxycodone and alprazolam were mentioned in more than 1,500 deaths. 

The CDC has already released a preliminary estimate on overdoses for 2017 using a different form of analysis. But the results are largely the same. Over 70,200 people died of a drug overdose in 2017 – the highest number on record. Deaths involving fentanyl and other synthetic, mostly black market opioids surged 45 percent, while deaths involving natural or semisynthetic opioids, mostly painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, remained flat.      

The number of opioid prescriptions in the United States has been falling since 2011, but opioid medication remains a favorite target for regulators. The DEA has proposed another round of cuts in the supply of opioid pain medication – a 10% reduction in manufacturing quotas in 2019 for oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine and three other opioids. Some of the medications are already in short supply, forcing hospitals to use other pain relievers to treat surgery and trauma patients.

The Trump Administration says opioid pain relievers are “frequently misused” and that reducing their supply will help prevent addiction, abuse and overdoses. There is little or no evidence that is true.

The Overdose Crisis Is Not Just About Rx Opioids

By Roger Chriss, PNN Columnist

The CDC last week released its latest report on drug overdoses in 2017.  The death toll was the highest recorded, with over 70,000 Americans dying from drug poisoning. Deaths involving illicit fentanyl and other black market synthetic opioids surged 45 percent, while deaths involving opioid pain medication remained unchanged.

Although the death toll for 2018 may be a bit lower, it is premature to declare as the Washington Post did that “the opioid epidemic may be receding.”

Instead, the crisis is evolving.

“Fentanyl deaths are up, a 45 percent increase; that is not a success,” Dan Ciccarone, PhD, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, told the New York Times. “We have a heroin and synthetic opioid epidemic that is out of control and needs to be addressed.”

The available data for 2018 supports this. There have been over 1,500 overdoses in Massachusetts so far this year and the details of those deaths are sobering. Fentanyl was present in 90 percent of toxicology reports during the second quarter of 2018, a three-fold increase since 2014. Prescription drugs of any form were found in only 17 percent of reports.

Public health data from Connecticut is similar. Illicit opioids were found in nearly 80 percent of the 867 people who died of an unintentional opioid overdose in 2016.

Current data is also showing that drugs like methamphetamine are having a significant impact on overdose rates. Kaiser Health News reports that amphetamine related hospitalizations – mostly involving meth – are surging and that more than 10,000 people died of meth-related drug overdoses last year.

The opioid overdose crisis is no longer primarily about prescription opioids used medically, or even exclusively about opioids. And studies of long-term opioid therapy are not showing increasing rates of overdose.

Medscape reported on a recent study that found cancer patients had a much lower risk of dying from an opioid overdose than the general population. The study looked at opioid deaths from 2006 through 2016, a period that saw rapidly rising overdose rates. Opioid death rates jumped from 5.33 to 8.97 per 100,000 people in the general population during that period, but among cancer patients, opioid deaths rose from 0.52 to 0.66 per 100,000.

Another recent study found that the use of opioids in treating pain from sickle cell disease was “safe” and rarely results in overdoses  

“What our study uniquely shows is that, using this large nationwide database, that deaths in a hospital setting related to opioid toxicity or overdose almost never happen among those with sickle cell disease," Oladimeji Akinola Akinboro, MBBS, of Boston University School of Medicine told Medpage. "This suggests that current patterns of opioid use in this population is safe, assuming we continue the same risk-mitigation strategies."

In other words, long-term pain management in disorders like cancer and sickle cell disease is not associated with increased rates of fatal overdose. Both of these studies have important limitations, in particular the possibility that some overdose deaths went uncounted. But the low rates of overdose in these groups suggests that with careful patient screening and monitoring, opioids can be used safely.

More can and should be done. Opioids are being prescribed more cautiously to children and teens. This is important, in light of a new JAMA study on wisdom tooth extraction, which found that over 5% of young people who had their wisdom teeth removed and received opioids for pain control went on to receive an opioid abuse-related diagnosis.

The overdose crisis is fast evolving into a poly-drug substance use problem. Addiction expert Michael Botticelli, the former director of National Drug Control Policy, told WBUR that a better understanding is needed of why people use drugs, not just which drugs they use.

"The data are pretty clear that we have a drug use epidemic and a drug overdose epidemic,” he said. “I think we have to really be careful that our strategies speak to all of those issues.”

Roger Chriss lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is a technical consultant in Washington state, where he specializes in mathematics and research.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Lessons from 'American Overdose' on the Opioid Crisis

By Roger Chriss, PNN Columnist

The book “American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts” by Chris McGreal takes a hard look at the opioid crisis. The book focuses on the legal and political side of the crisis, along with a history of Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, and a detailed description of pill mills and rogue pharmacies in Appalachia.

“It is a tragedy forged by the capture of medical policy by corporations and the failure of institutions in their duty to protect Americans,” is how McGreal describes the genesis and evolution of the crisis.

The book highlights the massive collusion and corruption in communities in West Virginia and Kentucky, leading to the Williamson Wellness Center and other pill mills that were protected by law enforcement, ignored by state and federal regulators, and encouraged or exploited by drug manufacturers and distributors.

McGreal also traces the history of Purdue and the Sackler family, and how their efforts to improve pain management led to the creation of the blockbuster drug OxyContin. He explains how Purdue’s marketing claims “proved to be demonstrably false, including an assertion that addiction is rare when opioids are taken under a doctor’s care.”

However, McGreal does not depict Purdue as a lone bad actor. Instead, federal and state dysfunction and disinterest contributed to the crisis. “The FDA wasn’t the only one to drop the ball. A clutch of federal agencies with long names have responsibility for combating drug addiction and overdose,” he wrote. And they all failed.

The failure was both systemic and systematic. As the crisis unfolded, local law enforcement had to contend with “indifference and what they regarded as the political cowardice of the system.” Perhaps more important than the cowardice and corruption was greed, not just corporate greed but also local greed for the money brought in by pill mills: “The businesses did good. You had pharmacies that were doing really good.”

The problem soon extended far beyond Appalachia. Among the earliest and biggest pill mills was American Pain, set up in 2007 near Fort Lauderdale, Florida by twin brothers Chris and Jeff George – neither of whom had medical training.

Opioid addiction also rose across the nation because of cultural factors, writes McGreal. In Utah, “the dominance of the conservative Church of Latter-day Saints appeared to be a cause of addiction, not a deterrent” because of the church’s “toxic perfectionism.”

Government agencies and officials were encouraged to ignore it all. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s office wasn’t interested in pursuing pill mills and the “political leadership within Florida wasn’t much better.”

Rudy Giuliani, Eric Holder, and James Comey all helped Purdue, according to McGreal, by delaying investigations of the company as addiction and overdose rates rose rapidly in the 2000’s.

The CDC’s involvement is described as delayed and dysfunctional. "Until 1998 the United States used a classification system lumping heroin, morphine, and prescription opiate deaths together," McGreal points out. Even when CDC researcher Len Paulozzi documented rising trends in overdose deaths, no one paid serious attention until Thomas Frieden, MD, became director. Even then, serious flaws remain in how the CDC reports on overdose deaths.  

Anti-opioid activists Andrew Kolodny, MD, founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP), and PROP President Jane Ballantyne, MD, sounded warnings about opioids, but offered little in the way of solutions outside of cutting off prescriptions. Many of their warnings proved to be unfounded, in particular with the opioid analgesic Zohydro. The drug was approved by the FDA amid dire warnings of a major spike in addiction and overdoses, but “there was no great surge of overdoses because of Zohydro.”

“FDA officials don’t like Kolodny. They characterize him as unreasonable and difficult. One described him as a ‘complex character’,” McGreal writes.

Similarly, the 2016 CDC opioid prescribing guideline is described as too late to be useful. McGreal looks closely at the debate about the CDC guideline and recommendations from the 2017 opioid commission set up by President Trump. But despite these much-touted steps, “little changed on the ground for states desperate for treatment facilities and help with the social costs of the tragedy.”

The book concludes on a pessimistic note, captured in a comment from Nathaniel Katz, MD, about opioid addiction and overdose: "I don’t really see any prospect for intelligent policy in this area in the United States.”

McGreal summarizes his ideas with an indictment of American culture.

"In large parts of the United States, opioids were popular because they were a fix. A fix for emotional pain. A fix for failing bodies. A fix for struggling to make it in a society that promises so much, and judges by what is achieved, but turns it back on so many of those who fail to live up to that promise," he writes.

If “American Overdose” offers lessons, it is that the opioid crisis is a result not only corporate greed but also American culture; in particular politicians, regulators and a broader medical industry with agendas contrary to the public good. The book is an origin tale of the opioid crisis that offers little hope for the future.

Roger Chriss lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is a technical consultant in Washington state, where he specializes in mathematics and research.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network. 

Opioid Hysteria and the Demonizing of Dsuvia

By John Burke, Guest Columnist

Recently the FDA approved a new sublingual formulation of sufentanil -- called Dsuvia -- for the management of moderate to severe acute pain in hospital-like settings. This would include surgical centers and emergency departments.

When the FDA announced this approval, several so-called experts claimed that Dsuvia – which is a potent opioid – would worsen the already out of control opioid problem. They said it would quickly find its way to the streets of America and kill even more of our citizens addicted to opioids. They can’t imagine why the FDA would approve such a killer drug!

Dsuvia was originally developed by AcelRx Pharmaceuticals, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense, to treat battlefield wounds. The single dose formulation is designed to enter your body and provide pain relief faster than the traditional intramuscular injections that are now standard in treating traumatic injuries.

I can only imagine the horrendous wounds that are present on the battlefield. Offering faster pain relief seems like a great option, to say the least!  

ACELRX PHARMACEUTICALS

Dsuvia will also be used in our nation’s emergency departments and other healthcare facilities to offer faster pain relief to patients who suffer traumatic injuries. The drug will not be available in retail pharmacies or for most prescribers to order up for a patient. Doctor shoppers, script scammers and others that prey on retail pharmacies will have no access to this pain reliever. Those involved in armed robberies or burglaries of retail pharmacies will also have zero access.

Who will have access to Dsuvia are healthcare employees -- nurses, doctors and other medical professionals who already have access to a whole host of opioid drugs. There is no question that Dsuvia could potentially be a target of a small group of professionals who suffer from addiction problems. However, the illegal diversion and sale of this specific medication seems less likely in healthcare facilities.

Dsuvia will be more easily identified when it is diverted due to its limited availability and usage. Addicted healthcare employees will likely opt for more commonly used opioids like morphine and hydromorphone rather than a rarely used medication that will be easily missed when diverted.

The other part of this equation, that was either not considered by critics or didn’t suit their narrative, is that diversion inside healthcare facilities virtually always involves self-addiction. This means that even if an opioid is stolen by an employee inside one of these facilities, it will rarely make it to the street and cause more deaths.  

AcelRx has already developed a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) involving RADARS, a nationwide drug abuse surveillance system, to monitor any diversion of Dsuvia and provide quarterly reports to law enforcement. In the interest of full disclosure, I am on the Scientific Advisory Board of RADARS.

Dsuvia has great potential to provide quick relief to trauma patients in a focused setting. Its diversion potential, especially to the public, is almost nil. Demonizing a drug without any real knowledge of its legal distribution and potential for diversion is irresponsible to say the least.

The drug problem in America primarily involves street drugs such as heroin, illicit fentanyl, and more recently crystal methamphetamine and cocaine. Even as the prescribing of opioids has dropped over 30% in recent years, drug deaths continued to rise. The reason is the increased supply of street drugs supplied by cartels that continue to profit from our nation’s addiction.

Put the blame where it belongs, and don’t ostracize a legitimate new pain drug that any of us might need in an emergency.

John Burke spent nearly 50 years in drug and law enforcement in southwestern Ohio. John is a former president of the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators and is the president and founder of the International Health Facility Diversion Association, a non-profit devoted to the issues surrounding the diversion of controlled substances from healthcare facilities.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represent the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Overdoses Soar in 2 States Despite Fewer Rx Opioids

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

New studies from two of the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis – Massachusetts and Pennsylvania -- are throwing a damper on recent speculation that drug overdoses may have peaked.  

Researchers at Boston Medical Center released a startling study that found nearly 5 percent of people over the age of 11 in Massachusetts have an opioid use disorder.

The Drug Enforcement Administration also admitted in a Joint Intelligence Report that reducing the supply of prescription opioids in Pennsylvania failed to reduce the state’s soaring overdose rate and may have even increased demand for counterfeit painkillers. Pennsylvania had 5,456 fatal overdoses in 2017, a 65% increase from 2015.  

“Implementation of legislation influencing prescription opioid prescribing has resulted in a decrease in availability; however, a corresponding decrease in demand is less certain,” the DEA report found.

“Practitioners may be offering non-opioid alternatives to pain management to their patients, but this is most likely due to increased scrutiny of prescribing habits, as well as legislated changes, not due to requests from patients seeking non-opioid products.”

Prescription opioids were involved in only 20% of Pennsylvania’s overdoses. Most of the deaths involve a combination of illicit drugs such fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and counterfeit medication.

“The increasing presence of counterfeit opioid CPDs (controlled prescription drugs) in Pennsylvania is an indicator of strong demand for opioid CPDs in the illicit market. Traffickers use substances such as heroin, fentanyl, and tramadol to create tablets that look like the opioid CPDs most commonly purchased on the street (e.g., oxycodone 30 milligram tablets). The tablets are often exact replicas with the shape, coloring, and markings consistent with authentic prescription medications,” the report found.

The DEA said heroin and fentanyl could be found in 97% of Pennsylvania’s counties and called the city of Philadelphia a “wholesale market” for illicit drugs from China and Mexico.

Opioid Use Disorder in Massachusetts

Illicit fentanyl is also blamed for a soaring number of fatal overdoses in Massachusetts, where researchers used a new method to estimate how many people have opioid use disorder (OUD).  

Instead of relying on insurance claims for addiction treatment, researchers used a database that links information from 16 state agencies on other forms of healthcare use. Researchers were then able to identify patients who have OUD and estimate those who have the disorder but aren't seeking treatment. Individuals with substance use disorders are often less likely to seek medical care or be insured. Many are also reluctant to admit they have a drug problem.  

"There are many people with opioid use disorder who do not encounter the health care system, which we know is a barrier to understanding the true impact of the opioid epidemic," said Joshua Barocas, MD, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center, who was lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Barocas and his colleagues found the prevalence of opioid use disorder in Massachusetts rose from 2.72% in 2011 to 4.6% in 2015. People between the ages of 11 and 25 experienced the greatest increase in OUD – a demographic much younger than a typical chronic pain sufferer, who is usually middle aged.

In 2012, Massachusetts was one of the first states where insurers and healthcare providers took steps to reduce the supply of prescription opioids – measures that have yet to have any meaningful impact on the state’s overdose rate.  

MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Massachusetts was also one of the first states to use toxicology screens from coroners and medical examiners to get a more accurate assessment of the drugs involved in overdoses.

According to the most recent report from the first quarter of 2018, nearly 90% of Massachusetts overdoses involve fentanyl, 43% percent involve cocaine, 42% involve benzodiazepines and 34% involve heroin. Prescription opioids were involved in only about 20% of the Massachusetts overdoses, the same rate as Pennsylvania.

Preliminary estimates released by the CDC last week show a modest 2.3% nationwide decline in opioid overdoses from September 2017 to March 2018. Over 48,000 people died from opioid overdoses during that period, with most of those deaths involving illicit fentanyl, heroin and other street drugs.

Social Media’s Role in the Opioid Epidemic

By Douglas and Karen Hughes, Guest Columnists

Drug epidemics since 1900 are dynamic and our hyper-information age makes ours even more pronounced. The so-called “opioid epidemic” is contingent upon socioeconomic demand and available drug supply. To fully understand it, we must look beyond opioid medication as the sole contributing factor.

Social media could be one cause that everyone has overlooked.

Overprescribing of opioids was initially the problem and it helped fill numerous medicine cabinets. Coincidentally, this occurred at about the same time as the explosion of cell phones, texting and social media, and the resultant peer-driven social narrative.

Instantaneous information exchange brought teenagers into contact with “high school druggies” — which their pre-cell phone parents knew only as a separate social group. Contact with them was taboo. Today, however, everyone is part of the larger social narrative.

Relating the euphoria of opioid use in open forums caused adolescents, who already feel indestructible, to rebel by trying them. These impressionable youth become attracted to opioids in the same way their parents were attracted to alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. This sent teens scrambling to find a free sample in grandmother’s medicine cabinet.

Many renowned physicians believe addictive personalities are actually formed by a genetic predisposition to addiction. All that is needed is some substance to abuse. Alcohol is usually the gateway drug for adolescents, the “first contact” for many teens. Forgotten opioids in a medicine cabinet only come later. Addicts will often say, “My drug use began with a prescription opioid.” But addiction experts know the battle was already lost if there was no intervention after “first contact” with drugs.

Society has long blamed overprescribing for the opioid epidemic, but the last three years have proven that to be a red herring. The mass closing of pill mills in 2015, the CDC opioid guideline in 2016, and the steep reduction in opioid production that followed in 2017 have only accelerated the epidemic. Forcing disabled intractable pain sufferers to suffer or self-medicate was not the solution.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention postulated that overprescribing caused the opioid epidemic because they only had clinical evidence for short term opioid therapy. Instead of opening a wider dialogue and seeking more evidence, the lack of critical long-term studies was used as an excuse to limit prescribing. Statistical manipulation of overdose deaths was used to confirm this errant policy.

This is emblematic of all investigations into our present drug problems. Society ran the fool’s errand that one blanket policy could be found for hundreds of diverse regional and local drug problems.

The opioid epidemic most likely emanated from widely accepted alcohol use and the social lure of opioids by adolescents. It has little to do with patients.

Douglas and Karen Hughes live in West Virginia. Doug is a disabled coal miner and retired environmental permit writer. Karen retired after 35 years as a high school science teacher.

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Should Roseanne Have Died From an Opioid Overdose?

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Roseanne Barr is the latest victim of America's opioid crisis. Or to be more precise, Roseanne Conner is.

The fictional matriarch of ABC’s cancelled “Roseanne” show was killed off in the opening episode of “The Conners” Tuesday night, with her family struggling to come to terms with her death. What was initially thought to be a fatal heart attack turns out to be an accidental overdose of prescription opioids.

TV audiences had last seen Roseanne Conner hiding her addiction to opioid painkillers while waiting for long-delayed and costly knee surgery. But that storyline ended when Roseanne Barr was fired by ABC for a racist tweet and the network had to come up with a way to explain her absence.

“We firmly decided against anything cowardly or far-fetched, anything that would make the fierce matriarch of the Conners seem pathetic or debased,” Executive Producer Bruce Helford explained in The Hollywood Reporter.

“I wanted a respectful sendoff for her, too: one that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class, whose authentic problems are often ignored by broadcast television.”

ABC

"I AIN'T DEAD BITCHES," Barr tweeted after watching the show. She followed up with a longer joint statement with her spiritual advisor, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

“We regret that ABC chose to cancel 'Roseanne' by killing off the Roseanne Conner character,” the statement said. "That it was done through an opioid overdose lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show.”

It was also a bit of a cliché. The popular perception that most opioid overdoses are due to prescription painkillers is now largely a myth.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 49,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017, but over half of them were due to illicit fentanyl and heroin, not prescription opioids.

A more accurate way to depict Roseanne’s death would have been through an overdose of heroin or counterfeit painkillers laced with fentanyl. That’s how thousands of Americans are dying. Roseanne Conner could have even been driven to suicide by untreated pain. Imagine what an eye-opening show that would have been.

Instead, the Conner family discovers that Roseanne was hiding painkillers all over the house and sharing them with a group of friends, all of them struggling with pain and addiction. The show makes it appear like opioid medication is easy to obtain, something real pain patients know is no longer true.

The only thing missing from the hackneyed script was someone saying, “If only Roseanne had tried yoga and taken Tylenol, she’d still be alive!”

Executive producer Bruce Rasmussen told Variety last week they thought carefully about how to end Roseanne's character. "You don't want to be flip about how you do this," said Rasmussen.

But that’s exactly how it came across to some PNN readers.

“The media can't seem to get the other side of the story out, nor can they print the truth about exactly how many deaths are the result of PRESCRIPTION opiates,” wrote Stephen Johnston.  “Now millions of folks will be watching as more gas is poured onto the fire. That same fire that's burning up what's left of people like myself and millions of others for whom opiate pain medications are the only relief from whatever traumatic accident or terrible malady has befallen them.”

“It was bad enough when they made pain meds a focus of the rebooted show when the first episode of the show's return aired. Now we have the added stigma, as intractable pain people, of them choosing to have Roseanne die from opioid misuse,” said Jack.

“Don't give the writers, actors, producer, the network hacks, etc., anything that isn't OTC when they have occasion to need pain relief — chronic or acute. Tylenol 3's would be much too generous, as many of us don't even get those.”

You can watch the first episode of “The Conners” by clicking here.

Overdose Crisis Began 40 Years Ago

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

The overdose crisis in the United States began long before a spike in opioid prescribing and is likely to last for many more years, according to a new study published in Science magazine.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health looked at nearly 600,000 poisoning deaths in the U.S. from 1979 to 2016 and found a steadily rising number of overdoses caused by “subepidemics” of different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, illicit fentanyl, methamphetamine and prescription opioids. As each subepidemic rose and fell, the drug fueling it was replaced by another substance that can be abused.

“The epidemic of drug overdoses in the United States has been inexorably tracking along an exponential growth curve since at least 1979, well before the surge in opioid prescribing in the mid-1990s,” said senior author Donald Burke, MD, Pitt Public Health dean and UPMC-Jonas Salk Chair of Global Health. 

“Although there have been transient periods of minor acceleration or deceleration, the overall drug overdose mortality rate has regularly returned to the exponential growth curve. This historical pattern of predictable growth for at least 38 years strongly suggests that the epidemic will continue along this path for several more years.”

Burke and his colleagues say the type of drug and the demographics of those who die from overdoses has fluctuated over the years. When the use of one drug waned, another drug replaced it, attracting new populations from different geographic regions.

When plotted on a map, certain drugs dominate different areas. Almost every region in the country is a hot spot for overdose deaths from one or more drugs. Heroin and cocaine primarily impact urban populations, while prescription opioids and methamphetamine skew a bit more rural. Cocaine increased death rates for black men, while heroin raised the death rates for younger whites and older blacks.

To be successful, researchers say overdose prevention efforts must extend beyond control of individual drugs. The current subepidemic of drug deaths caused by illegal and legal opioids will likely to be replaced by something else.

“The recent historical variability with which some specific drugs have waxed and waned makes predictions about the future role of specific drugs far more uncertain. Indeed, it is possible that in the future, the drug overdose epidemic may be driven by a new or heretofore obscure psychoactive substance,” Burke warned. 

Click on the video below to see a chart of the different subepidemics and how they align to form an exponential growth curve:

Technological factors fueling the epidemic include enhanced communication methods (smartphones and the Internet), faster supply chains (FedEx and UPS) and underground drug manufacturing that increased the supply of drugs while lowering their cost. Socioeconomic factors such as unemployment, lost social connections and lack of healthcare may also be creating a climate of despair that leads to drug abuse. 

“Understanding the forces that are holding multiple subepidemics together into a smooth exponential trajectory may be important in revealing the root causes of the epidemic, and thisunderstanding may be crucial to implementation of prevention and intervention strategies,” Burke said. 

“Evidence-based public health responses have contained past epidemics. If we understand and address these root causes at the same time that we take on the opioid crisis, we should be able to curb the epidemic for good."

FDA Expands Safe Prescribing Program for Opioids

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will require that educational training in pain management and safe opioid prescribing be offered to all healthcare providers under a major expansion of the agency’s Opioid Analgesic Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) program.

REMS is also being expanded to include immediate-release (IR) opioids such as hydrocodone, oxycodone and morphine. Until now, REMS regulations only applied to extended-release and long-acting (ER/LA) opioid analgesics, such as OxyContin and Exalgo. Warning labels will be updated for all IR opioids, which account for about 90 percent of opioid pain medications.

“Many people who become addicted to opioids will have their first exposure in the medical setting,” said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, in a statement. “Today’s action, importantly, subjects immediate-release opioids – which are the most commonly prescribed opioid products – to a more stringent set of requirements.”

The REMS program was first established in 2012. It required manufacturers of ER/LA opioids to pay for continuing education programs for prescribers only. Updated educational content must now also be provided to nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare providers who seek it. The training will cover broader information about pain management, including alternatives to opioids for the treatment of pain.

The training is not mandatory, but the FDA is considering whether to require continuing educational programs in pain management and safe prescribing.

“The agency believes that all health care providers involved in the management of patients with pain should be educated about the safe use of opioids so that when they write or dispense a prescription for an opioid analgesic, or monitor patients receiving these medications, they can help ensure the proper product is selected for the patient and used with appropriate clinical oversight,” the agency said.

“I think these changes to the REMS are very good and long overdue,” said Bob Twillman, PhD, Executive Director of the Academy of Integrative Pain Management. “We know that the IR opioids are much more highly sought-after, versus ER/LA opioids, for purposes of abuse, and there is absolutely no reason why they (and their manufacturers) should be exempt from this requirement.  

“I’m not concerned, at this stage, about this change causing primary care providers to back off on prescribing, given that participation in the program is still completely voluntary for healthcare providers. If this voluntary status changes, and FDA finds a way to make REMS education mandatory, I will be concerned that some providers will opt out of prescribing opioids altogether.”

The FDA’s action greatly expands the number of opioid products covered by REMS from 62 to 347 opioid analgesics. The updated warning labels will strongly encourage providers to complete a REMS education program, and to counsel patients and caregivers on the safe use of opioid medication.

“Our goal is to help prevent patients from becoming addicted by decreasing unnecessary or inappropriate exposure to opioids and fostering rational prescribing to enable appropriate access to those patients who have legitimate medical need for these medicines,” said Gottlieb.

Opioid prescriptions in the United States fell sharply during the first half of 2018 and now stand at their lowest levels since 2003, according to data released last month by the FDA. The trend appears to be accelerating as many doctors lower doses, write fewer prescriptions or simply discharge pain patients.

While opioid prescriptions decline, overdoses continue to rise. According to preliminary data from the CDC, nearly 49,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017, over half of them due to illicit fentanyl, heroin and counterfeit drugs, not prescription opioids.

The Role of Suicide in the Opioid Crisis

By Roger Chriss, PNN Columnist

Suicide is an under-appreciated factor in the opioid crisis. Media reports rarely mention it, and pundits and politicians often ignore it. But the reality emerging from experts and a careful study of drug deaths shows that it is very important.

“We’ve done preliminary work suggesting that 22 to 37 percent of opioid-related overdoses are, in fact, suicides or suicide attempts,” Bobbi Jo Yarborough, PsyD, an investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, told HealthItAnalytics.

Yarborough’s estimate is 2 to 3 times higher than the CDC’s. The CDC’s Annual Surveillance Report of Drug-Related Risks and Outcomes states that there were 5,206 suicides among the 47,105 poisoning deaths in 2015. This represents a suicide rate of 11 percent. The CDC gives similar data for 2016 drug deaths, estimating that only 8% were suicides.

Recognition of the importance of suicide in the opioid crisis has been slow to come.

In 2017, then-president of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Maria Oquendo, suggested that the suicide rate may be as high as 40 percent, writing in a guest blog for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) that the risk for suicide death was over 2-fold for men with opioid use disorder and for women it was more than 8-fold.

Now, finally, interest in this issue is growing. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention recently issued its first grant for studying suicide related to opioid use.

Kaiser Permanente also recently received a grant from NIDA to “examine the role of opioid use in suicide risk and develop better tools to help clinicians identify patients who are at highest risk.”  Kaiser researchers plan to use machine learning and analytics to predict the likelihood of a suicide attempt within 90 days of a primary care outpatient or mental health visit.

Fundamental questions about suicide in the opioid crisis remain to be answered.

"No one has answered the chicken and egg (question)," Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, a Massachusetts family physician, told NPR. “(Do people) have mental health issues that lead to addiction, or did a life of addiction then trigger mental health problems?”

Similarly, people with chronic pain disorders are thought to be “at increased risk for suicide compared with the general population,” as noted in a 2018 PAINWeek conference presentation.

But causality is also uncertain. At present it is not clear what proportion of suicides in the opioid crisis are due to despair, anxiety, addiction or the increasingly poor quality of pain care. There are many anecdotal reports of pain patient suicides, a tragically ignored feature of the crisis.

These distinctions are critical for public health policy in the opioid crisis. Current policy is largely geared toward restricting the opioid supply and monitoring legal pills after prescription. This does little to address underlying mental health issues, illegal drug use, or the impact of psychosocial or economic circumstances on people.

We need a clearer understanding of the opioid crisis, and that includes suicide.

Roger Chriss lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is a technical consultant in Washington state, where he specializes in mathematics and research.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.