Are We Near an Opioid Tipping Point?
/By Roger Chriss, Columnist
We are fast approaching a tipping point in the opioid medication crisis.
Consider all that is happening:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Research (CMS) wants to adopt the CDC guidelines as mandatory rules for prescribing opioids to Medicare recipients. CMS has proposed a daily ceiling on opioid medication as low as 90 milligrams morphine equivalent dose (MED) for millions of people.
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has proposed a daily limit on opioids of 120 MED for no more than 90 consecutive days.
The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs are also seeking greater restrictions on opioids, including a recommendation not to prescribe them for chronic pain to anyone under the age of 30.
States are clamping down on the dose and duration of opioid prescriptions. Maine has passed legislation severely restricting opioid prescribing, joining states like New Jersey, Virginia and Washington in tightly regulating opioids. Although there are exceptions for cancer pain and end-of-life care, people with chronic or intractable pain are being forced to taper their dose or replace opioids with less effective options.
Taxes on opioids are under consideration in New York and in California, which is also looking at prohibiting people under 21 from receiving oxycodone.
Rhetoric is reaching propaganda-like levels of hyperbole in the so-called war on opioids. The Hill recently ran a blog post with the headline “Chemical weapons of mass destruction on US soil.” It opens with the statement that “America is under attack. Chemical weapons of mass destruction are now in every city nationwide in the form of opioid drugs.”
The Huffington Post Canada has a similarly alarmist post claiming that “fully one-third of Americans who are given prescription opioids become addicted within two months.” It also claims that "pharmaceutical companies in Brazil and China are bucking the trend by running training seminars urging doctors to prescribe more painkillers rather than less.”
In an interview in MedPageToday, Dr. Daniel Clauw states that "I haven't prescribed an opioid for chronic pain in at least a decade," without ever clarifying what the outcomes were for his patients.
Predictions about the crisis are more dire. A recent article in MarketWatch headlined “America’s battle with drugs: Fatal overdoses spike among white, middle-aged men” said researchers at Columbia University have predicted that fatal drug overdoses “will peak at 50,000 annual deaths in 2017 before declining to ‘a non-epidemic state’ of 6,000 deaths in 2035.”
We are on the verge of an opioid tipping point, approaching the kind of prohibition the U.S. tried with alcohol almost 100 years ago. But rather than a Constitutional amendment, state governments and federal regulatory agencies are coming together like a swarm of angry bees to attack opioid substance abuse by clamping down on people who receive opioid therapy.
This is like trying to stop car thieves from driving recklessly by imposing new rules and regulations on safe drivers in their own cars.
The consequences of these restrictions are easy to see. People forced into rapid tapering to get their opioid dose into compliance with CDC guidelines are enduring dangerous side effects. People abruptly cut off from their pain medication are so overwhelmed by the pain of debilitating medical conditions that they contemplate or even commit suicide.
A column in STAT News recently discussed the “inhumane treatment” of pain patients, which Dr. Lynn Webster anticipated in his 2014 article, “Pain and Suicide: The Other Side of the Opioid Story.”
So why the race to restrict opioid medication? Is it so policymakers and legislators can say they did something? Are they playing defense and trying to pre-empt addiction? Does the rhetoric insulate them from facing the consequences for people with chronic or intractable pain?
Maybe the goal is to prevent addiction no matter the cost. But the cost is being born by the many people currently being successfully treated with opioid therapy.
This tipping point is a misguided step in a pointless direction. Even if it does help prevent a single case of substance abuse, it requires sacrificing the quality of life of thousands of people enduring the pain of chronic illness.
Worse, tipping points can happen very fast. But recovering from a tipping point and restoring balance in a system takes time. Which leads to a final question: How long will chronic and intractable pain patients have to suffer before policymakers and politicians see the harm restrictive opioid prescribing is causing?
Roger Chriss suffers from Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is from Washington state, where he works as a technical consultant who specializes in mathematics and research.
Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to: editor@PainNewsNetwork.org.
The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.
