Substance abuse has long carried a negative stereotype on the abuser. However, research shows that doctors and pharmaceutical companies bear a lot of responsibility in the opioid epidemic.
More than a 1,000 people every day are treated in emergency departments for misusing prescription opioids like Percocet, OxyContin, Vicodin, and Methadone. Doctors continue to overprescribe these lethal drugs. According to the Center for Disease Control in 2014, almost 2 million Americans abused or were dependent on prescription opioids. The CDC says opioid prescribing continues to fuel the epidemic that kills nearly 200 Americans a day.
States have started cracking down on doctors who prescribe nearly 300 million opioids a year. In the latest effort to monitor overprescribing, states started using a database made by Appriss Inc. that keeps track of patients’ and doctors’ opioid prescriptions history. Currently, 40 states and Washington, D.C. submit prescriber records for physicians to monitor the patients’ opioid prescription history. They also act as a watchdog of doctors who overprescribe the highly addictive opiates. Since buying this software, the state of Michigan has fired over 20 doctors they found who were overprescribing opioids.
In addition to cracking down on doctors, states are now beginning to criticize pharmaceutical companies for their role in the crisis. Nationwide attorneys are making the argument that pharmaceutical companies are equally at fault in this crisis by falsely advertising the effects and addictiveness of their products to increase profit. Just last week, South Carolina sued the largest opioid manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, which makes the highly addictive pain narcotic OxyContin. South Carolina’s Attorney General Alan Wilson said the company uses unfair and deceptive marketing of their opioid painkillers. The lawsuit states that, since 2007, Purdue “significantly downplayed how addictive its opioids are and also overstated the benefits of opioids compared to other forms of pain management in order to increase its market share and profits.”
The Attorney General’s statement accuses Purdue of taking many unethical measures to sell its products by telling doctors that patients, receiving opioid prescriptions for pain, will generally not become addicted. The lawsuit says that Purdue told doctors that patients who seem addicted to their drug, are just “pseudoaddicted” or under-treated for their pain, encouraging doctors to prescribe more opioids. The company also told doctors their painkillers worked better when used long-term, which has not been studied or proven for the drug.
South Carolina was ranked ninth in the nation for high opioid prescription rates, with deaths by heroin and prescription opioids surpassing homicide deaths. The Palmetto State has also seen their number of infants born addicted to opioids quadruple since 2000.
“This suit seeks to hold Purdue accountable for creating this crisis and seeks remedies to stop its misleading, deceptive, and dangerous marketing tactics. While there is a time and place for patients to receive opioids, Purdue prevented doctors and patients from receiving complete and accurate information about opioids in order to make informed choices about their treatment options,” Attorney General Wilson said in a statement on the lawsuit.
South Carolina is not the only state to sue an opioid manufacturer. As this crisis continues to escalate, more than 25 states, cities, and counties have filed cases against opioid manufacturers for the same types of misleading marketing tactics. Officials at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have also proposed to cut the amount of opioid production by 20 percent in 2018.
Every three weeks, opioids kill more people than the victims of the September 11th terror attacks. Monthly, substance abuse disorder is killing over 4,000 people and rising. On August 10th, President Trump declared the opioid crisis a national emergency giving substance abuse disorder national attention.
