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Year after year, America’s drug overdose crisis is worsening.
In the 12-month period ending in June 2021, the most recent period for which there is reliable data, more than 101,000 people died from drug overdose in the U.S., – an increase of more than 20% from the previous year.
2021 was also an important year for analysis of the overdose crisis, with numerous books and articles shedding light on both the causes and potential solutions to the crisis.
Not all analysis is in agreement, however. As a bioethicist who has spent much of the past several years researching the ethical and policy issues related to drug use, I’ve become particularly interested in an evolving tension between commentators on the drug crisis.
While many blame today’s crisis on an increase in drug supply over the past 25 years, others suggest that increasing drug supply can actually be a solution. So who is right? And what would ethical policy around drug supply look like?
Access to drugs can be a problem
The case against drugs is straightforward. As several experts have shown in recent years, the current drug overdose crisis was sparked by a steep increase in the supply of prescription opioids.
In his meticulously detailed book “Empire of Pain,” investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe reveals the extent to which Purdue Pharma, and the owning family, the Sacklers, utilized dishonest marketing strategies to drive aggressive prescribing of their extended-release opioid, OxyContin. Sales of the drug soared, and in the following years many other companies followed similar playbooks.
Public health scientists have now shown that, starting in 1999, the volume of opioids prescribed and the overdose death rate from prescription opioids increased in parallel for a decade, with prescription volume quadrupling by 2010 and overdose mortality quadrupling by 2008.
Read more at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/opioid-overdose-a-bioethicist-explains-why-restricting-supply-may-not-be-the-right-solution-173799
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