-
J Pain Palliat Care Pharmacother · Jun 2015
The epidemic of prescription opioid abuse, the subsequent rising prevalence of heroin use, and the federal response.
- Andrew B Kanouse and Peggy Compton.
- J Pain Palliat Care Pharmacother. 2015 Jun 1; 29 (2): 102-14.
AbstractOpioids are a mainstay in the treatment of pain both chronically and acutely. In the past 20 years, the prescribing of opioids has increased exponentially. As the population for whom opioids are indicated has grown, with the number of opioid prescriptions written increased, so have indicators of opioid misuse, abuse, morbidity, and mortality. The purpose of this article is to review and explore the combination of factors of events that led to the current "epidemic" of prescription opioid abuse and overdose deaths, as well as the subsequent resurgence of heroin use among opioid addicts. Federal initiatives to mount war on prescription opioid abuse are reviewed, including responses from the White House, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and interagency initiatives. Many initiatives are currently in place to combat the rising rates of morbidity and mortality associated with opioids, and those involved are hopeful in their efforts to curb the epidemic of this deadly phenomenon.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*,_underline_or**bold**. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>and subscript<sub>text</sub>. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3., hyphens-or asterisks*. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com) - Images can be included with:
 - For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote..