But some people have switched to heroin
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. "epidemic" of prescription-painkiller abuse may be starting to reverse course, a new study suggests.
Experts said the findings, published Jan. 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine, are welcome news. The decline suggests that recent laws and prescribing guidelines aimed at preventing painkiller abuse are working to some degree.
But researchers also found a disturbing trend: Heroin abuse and overdoses are on the rise, and that may be one reason prescription-drug abuse is down.
"Some people are switching from painkillers to heroin," said Dr. Adam Bisaga, an addiction psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City.
While the dip in painkiller abuse is good news, more "global efforts" -- including better access to addiction treatment -- are needed, said Bisaga, who was not involved in the study.
"You can't get rid of addiction just by decreasing the supply of painkillers," he said.
Prescription narcotic painkillers include drugs such as OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin. In the 1990s, U.S. doctors started prescribing the medications much more often, because of concerns that patients with severe pain were not being adequately helped.
U.S. sales of narcotic painkillers rose 300 percent between 1999 and 2008, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The increase had good intentions behind it, noted Dr. Richard Dart, the lead researcher on the new study. Unfortunately, he said, it was accompanied by a sharp rise in painkiller abuse and "diversion" -- meaning the drugs increasingly got into the hands of people with no legitimate medical need.
What's more, deaths from prescription-drug overdoses (mostly painkillers) tripled. In 2010, the CDC says, more than 12 million Americans abused a prescription narcotic, and more than 16,000 died of an overdose -- in what the agency termed an epidemic.
But based on the new findings, the tide may be turning, said Dart, who directs the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver.
His team found that after rising for years, Americans' abuse and diversion of prescription narcotics declined from 2011 through 2013. Overdose deaths, meanwhile, started to dip in 2009.
source : U.S. Painkiller Abuse 'Epidemic' May Be Declining, Study Says
