How to Fight the Opioid Crisis

A perfect storm of factors over the last few decades has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of opioid medications prescribed to people. At the same time pharmaceutical companies were assuring doctors that opioids were completely safe and non-addictive, direct-to-consumer advertisement of medications became deregulated and pain was added as another vital sign in hospitals and physician offices. Suddenly not only were opioids widely available, but also people were asking for them by name and nurses and PAs were reporting pain levels alongside blood pressure readings. By 2010, one in five patients who reported pain received an opioid prescription. Activists, physicians, and policymakers started to sound the alarm, but the opioid epidemic was already in full swing.

Between 2012 and 2016 prescriptions for opioids actually fell about 20% thanks to the efforts of those healthcare providers on the front lines and the activists who alerted us about the detrimental effects of opioid overprescription, but by then the heroin epidemic had already begun. When people became addicted to prescription opioids and then their prescriptions ran out, many would turn to illegal sources to get them, which eventually included heroin for many of those afflicted with addiction.

By 2017 the CDC announced that opioid use had reached epidemic levels. Is there still time to fight this epidemic back? Learn more about the history of the opioid epidemic and what is being done to fight it from the infographic below.