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IPFS News Link • Health and Physical Fitness

Who Is Telling The Truth About Prescription Opioid Deaths? DEA? CDC? Neither?

• https://www.acsh.org

"Controlled Prescription Drugs (CPDs) ... are still responsible for the most drug-involved overdose deaths and are the second most commonly abused substance in the United States."

2018 National Drug Threat Assessment. Drug Enforcement Administration, October 2018.

I just don't get it. A newly-released 164-page report just issued by the DEA maintains that controlled prescription drugs are killing more Americans than any other type of drug (1); even more than heroin and fentanyl. But if you've been keeping up in this area this sounds very strange. Can it really be true that drugs like Vicodin and Percocet are killing more Americans, especially when one report after another lays the blame on illicit fentanyl and its scary analogs? What is going on? Are we seeing more of lying by omission or the use of intentionally misleading statistics, such as we've seen from the CDC and its advisors (See: The Opioid Epidemic In 6 Charts Designed To Deceive You)? Is this claim legitimate? 

While the quote at the beginning seems clear enough, it is either intentionally deceiving, or unintentionally confusing. Here's why.

First, given the non-stop barrage of opioid crisis stories, most of which have been dead wrong, many people will automatically assume that "controlled prescription drugs" refers to prescription opioids. It does not. Other classes of drugs are also controlled and they are lumped together with opioids:

"Controlled prescription drugs (CPDs) includes, but is not limited to narcotics (e.g. Vicodin, OxyContin), depressants (e.g. Valium, Xanax), stimulants (e.g. Adderall, Ritalin), and anabolic steroids (e.g. Anadrol, Oxandrin)."

Indeed, if you look carefully enough there is a separate definition for opioid analgesic drugs:

"Opioid analgesic overdose deaths include deaths from natural and semi-synthetics: codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone."

This means that:

Controlled prescription drugs may be responsible for most drug-related overdose deaths, but since other classes are included in the CPD group we cannot know whether this conclusion applies to opioid analgesics without knowing the contribution of depressants, stimulants, and anabolic steroids.

If you believe that this language is reminiscent of what we heard from PROP and the CDC you are not alone.

If you believe that this language may be intentionally constructed to convey another message you are not alone.

So, let's rewrite the quote at the top to make it more accurate:

"Controlled Prescription Drugs (CPDs) ... are still responsible for the most drug-involved overdose deaths and are the second most commonly abused substance in the United States, but opioid analgesics may or may not be."

There are plenty of reasons to suspect that they are not. Let's start with another statement two paragraphs below the one at the top.

"Illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids — primarily sourced from China and Mexico—are now the most lethal category of opioids used in the United States."

This claim seems to better represent reality. Here are some other reality checks.


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