Do Anti-Opioid Ads Hammer Home Wrong Message?

By Pat Anson, Editor

People who take opioid pain medication are often accused of bad behavior – such as stealing, selling and diverting their drugs. Or being lost in a haze of opioid addiction.

Now pain patients are being depicted as self-destructive maniacs so hopelessly hooked on opioids they'll do anything for their next high.

Four government-sponsored ads released this week by the White House feature young people who deliberately and violently injure themselves to get opioid medication.

All four ads are cringe worthy.

Kyle smashes his hand with a hammer.

Chris breaks his arm by slamming a door on it.

Joe breaks his back when he crawls underneath a car and lets it fall right on top of him.

“They gave me Vicodin after my knee surgery," says Amy in the 4th ad. "They kept prescribing it, so I kept taking it.  I didn’t know it would be this addictive. I didn’t know how far I’d go to get more."

Amy then unbuckles her seat belt and drives her car into a garbage dumpster.

“Opioid addiction can happen after just five days. Know the truth, spread the truth,” an announcer solemnly warns.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy partnered with the Ad Council and the Truth Initiative to launch “The Truth About Opioids” campaign. The four 30-second ads are based on real life stories.

“After testing 150 different messages, we are all excited to launch four hyper-realistic ads that show true stories — not fictionalized and not embellished — true stories of four young adults who took extreme measures to get more prescription pills in order to feed their addiction,” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

“The goal is for other young adults to see these ads and ask themselves how they can prevent their lives and others’ lives from going down a similar path.  We hope these ads will spark conversation to educate teens and young adults to talk to their doctors about alternatives to opioids.”

The White House was vague about when and where the ads will run, and dodged questions about how much the campaign will cost taxpayers. Most of the productions costs and airtime are being donated by Facebook, YouTube, Google, NBCUniversal and other media partners.

Like the CDC’s recent Rx Awareness Campaign, the four commercials focus exclusively on opioid prescriptions, while ignoring the rising death toll taken by illicit fentanyl and heroin. It is also rare for anyone to become addicted to opioid medication after a few days, as the ads suggest.

A recent report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) warned that fentanyl and other black market opioids are now involved in more fatal overdoses than opioid medication. Drugs used to treat depression and anxiety are also linked to more deaths than painkillers. SAMHSA said that “widespread public health messaging is needed” about the rapidly changing nature of the overdose crisis.

Why then the continued focus on pain medication?  

“The fact is that the greatest amounts of misuse are happening among 18- to 24-year-olds.  Almost 6 million young people a year get prescribed opioids.  They are initiated into this.  And we know that most long-term heroin addiction starts among young people through a first experience with opioids.  So that is what we’re focusing on here because there is great need,” said Robin Koval, CEO and President of Truth Initiative.

But a recent study of high school heroin users found that most abuse a wide variety of substances – not just painkillers. Alcohol was the most common drug abused, followed by marijuana, ecstasy, LSD and other psychedelics, cocaine, amphetamines and tranquilizers. 

“The Truth About Opioids” campaign makes no mention of those other drugs.

"It may be inadequate to focus on heroin and opioid use in isolation,” said lead author Joseph Palamar, PhD, a  professor of population health at NYU School of Medicine. "A deeper understanding of how heroin users also currently use other drugs can help us to discern better prevention measures."

Do Hungry Mice Have the Answer to the Opioid Crisis?

By Pat Anson, Editor

Yes, that a silly headline. There have been a lot of them lately on how to end the opioid crisis, most of them involving new ways of treating chronic pain without the use of addictive drugs.

Some of these ideas are sincere, some are strange and others are just plain silly. There were a quite a few this week that produced some interesting headlines.

“Staying hungry may suppress chronic pain” was the headline in a Chinese website that reported on a study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers there found that laboratory mice that weren’t fed for 24 hours still felt acute short-term pain, but their chronic pain was suppressed by hunger.

“We didn't set out having this expectation that hunger would influence pain sensation so significantly," says J. Nicholas Betley, an assistant professor of biology in Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. "But when we saw these behaviors unfold before us, it made sense. If you're an animal, it doesn't matter if you have an injury, you need to be able to overcome that in order to go find the nutrients you need to survive."

Betley isn’t suggesting that chronic pain patients stop eating or starve themselves, but he believes the finding could pave the way to new pain medications that target brain receptors that control survival behavior.  

“Chronic pain relief: How marine snails may be able to help” was the headline used by WNDU-TV to report on a recent study at the University of Utah. 

Researchers there say a compound in the venom of cone snails could someday be used in pain medication. The venom paralyzes small fish so that hungry cone snails can slowly eat their prey alive.  

"We really hope that we will find a drug that could be as effective for severe pain as opioids but has far less side effects and is not addictive," says Russell Teichert, PhD, a research associate professor in the Department of Biology.

Interestingly, the cone snail study is funded with a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. Human trials are expected to begin in a couple years.

“Why Tai Chi Works So Well for Pain Relief” was the headline in Time about a study by researchers at Tufts Medical Center. The headline is a bit misleading, because the study only included fibromyalgia patients and compared the effectiveness of tai chi to aerobic exercise in relieving pain.

The last thing many fibromylagia sufferers want to do is practice tai chi, but the Chinese martial arts exercise was found to be just as good or better than aerobics, which is sometimes recommended as a non-drug treatment for fibromyalgia.

“It is low risk and minimally invasive, unlike surgery, and it will not harm your organs, like long term drug use,” said Amy Price, a trauma survivor who lives with chronic pain.

“Kellyanne Conway Tells Students to Eat Ice Cream and Fries Rather than Take Deadly Drug Fentanyl”  is how Newsweek summed up a speech by a top presidential advisor to a group of college students.

“On our college campuses, you folks are reading the labels, they won’t put any sugar in their body, they won’t eat carbs anymore, and they’re very, very fastidious about what goes into their body. And then you buy a street drug for $5 or $10, it’s laced with fentanyl and that’s it,” said Conway, who oversees the Trump administration’s response to the opioid crisis.

“So my short advice is, eat the ice cream, have the French fry, don’t buy the street drug—believe me, it all works out.”

Conway probably said this tongue-in-cheek, but critics were quick to pounce.

“Was feeling bad about my McDonalds ice cream cone today until I realized it helped me avert opioid addiction. Thanks Kellyanne Conway!” Lola Lovecraft tweeted.

 “I was considering doing fentanyl but now thanks to Kellyanne I’m just gonna 'have the French fry” instead. Saved me from a life on the streets!” tweeted Mike Stephens.

Conway’s boss had zinger of his own after signing a $1.3 trillion spending bill on Friday.

“We’re also spending $6 billion on, as you know, various forms of drug control, helping people that are addicted,” said President Trump.  “The level of drugs that are being put out there and the power of this addiction is hard to believe. People go to the hospital for a period of a week and they come out and they’re drug addicts.”

No, Mr. President, that’s a myth. Studies have repeatedly shown that it is rare for hospital patients to become addicted to opioids.

One study found that only 0.6% of patients recovering from surgery were later diagnosed with opioid misuse. Another study found that only 1.1% of patients treated with opioids in a hospital emergency room progressed to long term use.

What is true is that there’s a growing shortage of opioid medication in hospitals and hospices, and that’s leading to medical errors and the unnecessary suffering of patients. The shortage is due in part to manufacturing problems and severe cuts in opioid production quotas ordered by the DEA.

President Trump is aware that opioid prescribing has declined significantly, but he’d like to see more.  This week he called for opioid prescriptions to be cut by a third over the next three years. “Doctors are way down now in their orders of the opioids, way down. It’s a great thing,” he said.

Let's hope the hungry mice and cone snails share their secrets soon.

Opioid Commission Member Calls Panel a ‘Charade’

By Pat Anson, Editor

The Trump Administration and Congress have so neglected the country’s opioid crisis that they have turned the work of the president's opioid commission into a "charade" and a "sham," according to one panel member.

In a wide ranging interview with CNN, former Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy lamented a lack of focus and funding the opioid crisis has received since President Trump declared the overdose and addiction epidemic a national public health emergency last October.

"This and the administration's other efforts to address the epidemic are tantamount to reshuffling chairs on the Titanic," said Kennedy.

"The emergency declaration has accomplished little because there's no funding behind it. You can't expect to stem the tide of a public health crisis that is claiming over 64,000 lives per year without putting your money where your mouth is."

PATRICK KENNEDY

Without funding and resources, Kennedy said he believes the opioid commission's work had become a charade.

"I do. I honestly do. It means nothing if it has no funding to push it forward.... this thing's a charade,”” he told CNN. "I have to be true to the way I feel. This is essentially a sham."

President Trump appointed the bipartisan panel in March to give him a list of recommendations to combat drug addiction and the overdose crisis. 

COMMISSION on combating drug abuse and the opioid crisis

After a series of public hearings, the commission released its final report in November, an ambitious list of over four dozen recommendations aimed at treating addiction, preventing overdoses, and further restrictions on opioid prescribing.

But since the report’s release, little money has been set aside by Congress or the administration to implement the panel’s recommendations, except to increase border security and detect illegal drugs.

Last week President Trump proposed cutting the budget of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy – which oversaw the opioid commission’s work -- by 95 percent.  After a year in office, the president has yet to appoint a permanent director for the office, which currently has a 24-year old deputy chief of staff fresh out of college with no prior experience in management or drug control policy.

"Everyone is willing to tolerate the intolerable -- and not do anything about it," said Kennedy, who is recovering from alcohol and opioid addiction, and is a prominent mental health advocate.

“I'm as cynical as I've ever been about this stuff,” he said. “We've got a human addiction tsunami, and we need all hands on deck."

Bertha Madras, another member of the opioid commission, told CNN the panel has never received any direct feedback from Trump about its work. But she praised the selection of presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway as the key point person for the administration in dealing with the opioid crisis.

"That is really a very significant issue, bringing the implementation directly into the White House, as opposed to having intra-agency meetings," said Madras, a professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School. "Having been in government 10 years ago or so, I know how difficult it is to be able to generate change without having executive leadership behind you."

When asked by CNN about Kennedy's critique, she praised him for the "passion and depth he brings to the problem," but said it was premature for her to comment until she sees how much money is eventually allocated for the opioid crisis.

Can Kellyanne Conway Solve the Opioid Crisis?

By Mark Maginn, Columnist

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last week that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has been appointed to lead initiatives in the Trump Administration against the opioid crisis currently sweeping the country.

That’s right, President Trump’s former campaign manager and spinner of alternative facts has become the new “opioid czar” – although she is generally thought of inside and outside of the Washington beltway as someone as little acquainted with facts as her employer. 

Appointing a political shill who cares nothing about facts to such a high profile position strains credulity and places millions of pain sufferers and their doctors in jeopardy of more harassment and arrests.

KELLYANNE CONWAY (GAGE SKIDMORE PHOTO)

Ms. Conway is a professional resident of what candidate Trump called the “swamp” he pledged to drain. And now this denizen of the Capital’s reptilian power structure is to be in charge of initiatives alleviating the opioid epidemic. 

This is a position that requires the ability to gather experts together in order to devise wise and humane policies to help those in terrible pain and those who become addicted to opioid drugs such as OxyContin and, of course, heroin.

To add gravitas to the strained credulity of this outrageous appointment, we have none other than “opioid policy expert” and the founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP) weighing in.

"It is a positive sign. She is a high-profile figure in the administration, showing the administration takes this seriously,” Dr. Andrew Kolodny told BuzzFeed.

It appears that in Kolodny’s brand of myopia, possessing a “high-profile” is evidence of seriousness. Kolodny perpetuates the notion that notoriety equals intellect, organizational ability and tact.

Those who applaud this sad appointment apparently do not take this so-called opioid epidemic with anything approaching the seriousness it requires. Conway’s appointment will likely lead to more of the same stupid drug policy of harassing pain doctors and jailing patients desperate for pain relief. No serious policies can be expected.

For example, after nearly a year in office, the Trump administration has failed to name anyone to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. It also has yet to fund or propose a strategy for the overdose crisis, which President Trump declared a public health emergency in October. Does this look like an administration serious about the causes and treatment of drug addiction and drug overdose deaths?

Conway’s lack of candor and veracity is likely to lead to disastrous policies affecting millions of us. 

She infamously coined the phrase “alternative facts” in defense of then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s false statements about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. Conway later defended the President’s travel ban on mostly Muslim countries by making reference to the “Bowling Green Massacre.” She cited this fictitious terrorist massacre as evidence in support of the president’s travel ban on Muslims. 

The use of lies and half-truths by Conway should have been enough to disqualify her.

Can we believe that Conway will look to the ravages of poverty, the destruction of good middle class jobs, the collapse of education, the increasing wealth gap, and the epidemic of loneliness that I see in my office daily with patients suffering from various forms of depression and despair? No, certainly not. That would require long term financial commitment to jobs, healthcare, education, and housing.

Our current War on Drugs has led to the incarceration of millions of Americans of color. We now have more of our citizens in prison than any other nation. Yet Attorney General Sessions has created a new unit in the DEA that is solely charged with “investigating and prosecuting health care fraud related to prescription opioids.”

This indicates more law enforcement and pressure on doctors prescribing opioids for those of us who depend on these medicines simply to live. That is exactly the wrong policy. 

People of privilege like Ms. Conway and her boss, our President, are not capable of looking beyond their own wealthy horizons and seeing the lonely precincts of a depressed and despairing nation.

We need real, clear-eyed and honest people to bring us real, clear-eyed and honest help.

Mark Maginn lives with chronic back pain. He is a licensed mental health and social worker who spent 18 months working in New York City with survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Mark now has a private practice in psychotherapy in Chicago, where he specializes in working with people in intractable pain. 

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.