Feds battle opioid abuse with a circular firing squad

The ongoing battle to control opioid addiction has not gone well. Many of the government’s efforts have been medically and scientifically flawed and unproductive. Some have even been counterproductive. Public policy is in disarray.

A Feb. 1 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded, “Under current conditions, the opioid overdose crisis is expected to worsen — with the annual number of opioid overdose deaths projected to reach nearly 82,000 by 2025, resulting in approximately 700,000 deaths from 2016 to 2025.” But here’s the rub: In their system dynamics model, preventing prescription opioid misuse alone would have only a modest effect — a few percent — on lowering opioid overdose deaths in the near future.