Do Efforts to Crack Down on Prescription Drug Abuse Drive Users to Heroin? Tessie Castillo - The Fix
go to original February 22, 2014

Painkiller crackdown leads many to use heroin (USA Today/World News)

Let’s face it. Our country has a pill problem. Some blame our prescription addiction on an aging population of baby boomers with pain needs. Others point to the frantic pace of work and home obligations that make it easier to pop a capsule than to embrace lifestyle changes. The pharmaceutical industry’s aggressive marketing efforts to doctors and patients likely play a role.

But however our affair with pills developed, the relationship has turned deadly. Prescription painkiller use has skyrocketed 300% over the past decade, and currently more than 12 million Americans take pain relievers simply to get high. Equally disturbing, the dramatic growth in the availability of prescription opiates has mirrored a surge in heroin use. Nearly 80% of recent heroin initiates now start by misusing prescriptions.

In response to the prescription crisis, the government has launched a formidable campaign to crack down on pill diversion and abuse. Efforts include ramping up law enforcement operations targeted at “pill mills,” or illegitimate pain clinics, state implementation of prescription monitoring programs, reformulation of some pain relievers into tamper-resistant capsules, and medication take-back programs. While many of these methods may reduce the availability of abusable prescriptions, there is a growing concern that supply-based interventions don’t decrease addiction, but merely divert it.

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