REPORTED BY
NORMAN J CLEMENT RPH., DDS, NORMAN L.CLEMENT PHARM-TECH, MALACHI F. MACKANDAL PHARMD, BELINDA BROWN-PARKER, IN THE SPIRIT OF JOSEPH SOLVO ESQ., IN THE SPIRIT OF REV. C.T. VIVIAN, JELANI ZIMBABWE CLEMENT, BS., MBA., IN THE SPIRIT OF THE HON. PATRICE LUMUMBA, IN THE SPIRIT OF ERLIN CLEMENT SR., WALTER F. WRENN III., MD., JULIE KILLINGWORTH, WILLIE GUINYARD BS., JOSEPH WEBSTER MD., MBA, BEVERLY C. PRINCE MD., FACS., RICHARD KAUL, MD., LEROY BAYLOR, JAY K. JOSHI MD., MBA, ADRIENNE EDMUNDSON, ESTER HYATT PH.D., WALTER L. SMITH BS., IN THE SPIRIT OF BRAHM FISHER ESQ., MICHELE ALEXANDER MD., CUDJOE WILDING BS, MARTIN NDJOU, BS., RPH., IN THE SPIRIT OF DEBRA LYNN SHEPHERD, BERES E. MUSCHETT, STRATEGIC ADVISORS
HEARTLAND INSTITUTE INTERVIEWS JEFFREY A. SINGER MD
Jeffrey A. Singer discusses his blog post, “Hulu’s “Dopesick” Revives a False Narrative and Pain Patients May Suffer,” on the Heartland Institute’s podcast
THE CAUSE OF THE OPIOID CRISIS
According to a study called “Opioids and Chronic Pain: An Analytic Review of the Clinical Evidence,” published August 17, 2021, led by Stephen E. Nadeau1, Jeffrey K. Wu2, and Richard A. Lawhern3:
“Because the use of drugs distributed by pill mills was not closely supervised medically, misuse, diversion, and addiction appear to have become prevalent, both in states with large pill mill distributions and in areas of the country that were most susceptible to the lure of opioids because of poverty, mental illness, hopelessness, and a complex of other factors (117). Deaths from pill mill prescribed drugs also likely made a substantial, albeit incalculable, contribution to the rising mortality from prescription opioids between the late 1990’s and 2012.
Unfortunately, because state efforts to reign in pill mills came late, by 2012, the population of people who were misusing or were addicted to prescription opioids had grown to substantial proportions. In a 2007 study of 27,816 individuals entering addiction treatment programs, 78% of those who reported use of Oxycontin also reported that the drug had not been prescribed for any medical reason (118).
As pill mill crackdowns became more prevalent, these people either could not obtain prescription opioids or could no longer afford them. The introduction of an abuse-deterrent formulation of Oxycontin in 2010 may also have been a factor (62). In states with the highest initial rates of Oxycontin misuse, the introduction of the abuse-resistant formulation was associated with the largest differential increases in heroin deaths (119).
The pill mill crackdown and the introduction of abuse-resistant Oxycontin brought the prescription epoch to an end. The introduction of inexpensive and easily available high purity heroin and fentanyl, often in combination, appears to have then ushered in the illicit epoch, playing a major role in increasing unsupervised opioid use and associated mortality (58, 62, 120).
Heroin use has always been dangerous but, because of the 50 times greater potency of fentanyl and the unpredictable amount of lacing of heroin with fentanyl, heroin use has been converted from merely dangerous to something akin to Russian roulette, hence the continued and accelerating climb of opioid deaths since 2011.”
In summary, one would not have expected a strategy to control the opioid crisis to be effective when it consisted of restriction of physician prescribing practices in a crisis actually caused by pill mills, black market opioids, and street heroin and fentanyl. The evidence suggests that indeed, this has been failed approach.
HOW MEDIA TRAGICALLY PROMOTES THE “FALSE OPIOID NARRATIVE” OF SAM QUINONES’ BOOK DREAMLAND
“THE FENTANYL DISTORTION INTERVIEW”
How Media promotes the “False Narrative and Pain Patients Suffer,” this interview by XM-127 Hostess Zerlina Maxwell and Jess McIntosh on their show Signal Boost of author Sam Quinones on XM 127 Friday, November 5, 2021, is a classical example:
CONGRESS MUST CLEAN UP THIS MESS
FOR NOW, YOU ARE WITHIN
THE NORMS
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