Prescriptions for opioids, such as painkillers, fell for the first time after reaching a peak in 2010, though the amount prescribed in 2015 was still three times higher than in 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2015, the amount of opioids prescribed, including oxycodone and hydrocodone, was enough for every American to be medicated around the clock for three weeks.
“The bottom line is that too many are still getting too much for too long,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director at the CDC, said in a call with reporters. “And that is driving our problem with drug overdoses and drug overdose deaths in the country.”
Doctors began prescribing opioids for chronic pain, such as from arthritis or back pain, in the 1990s. As they wrote more prescriptions, they began to write some of them for higher doses. Both practices increased the likelihood that patients would develop an addiction. The increase helped fuel the opioid crisis in the U.S. today, and people who had become addicted to prescription painkillers often switched to the drug’s illegal — and cheaper — street counterpart, heroin.
Death rates from overdoses have increased, from 21,000 in 2010 to 33,000 in 2015, despite the reduction in prescribing patterns. Heroin deaths more than tripled from 3,036 to 10,574 during that period, according to CDC mortality data.
To assemble the study, which was published Thursday in the CDC’s Vital Signs report, scientists examined prescribing patterns from 2006 to 2015 and broke it down by county level from 2010 to 2015. Prescribing rates dropped 13 percent, from 81 prescriptions per 100 people to 71 prescriptions per 100 people.
They found that opioid prescribing varied significantly across counties. In counties that prescribed the highest amount of opioids, the rate of prescriptions was six times higher than in those that prescribed the lowest amounts. The counties where prescriptions were high were spread out across the U.S., but they tended to occur in small cities or large towns with a high percentage of white residents. They also tended to be in counties that had more primary care doctors and dentists, and occurred in places that had a higher rate of uninsured people, as well as higher rates of diabetes, arthritis and disability.
