A serious, but a typical health crisis that has shaken America, is now, apparently, in search of its prey in India – a soft target to ignite a raging fire of misuse or abuse of prescription drugs of addictive in nature. That India could probably be the next victim of this menace, is now being widely discussed and reported in the international media, though not so much in India, itself.
The January 2019 communique of the National Institute of Drug Abuse spotlights: ‘Every day more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids.’ Whereas, in 2017, more than 47,000 Americans, among 1.7 million suffering people, died as a result of an Opioid overdose. Snowballing effect of Opioids addiction commenced over a couple of decades ago and includes – both prescription pain relievers and synthetic Opioids, such as fentanyl, among others.
The health menace of this humongous dimension is not only jeopardizing public health, but also impacting the social and economic welfare, work productivity, besides drug addiction related criminal behavior of an increasing number of addicts.
In this article, exploring the factors – that not just ignited, but fueled this fire, I shall try to explain why India could be a fertile ground for another opioid epidemic. The key intent is to thwart this menace without further delay, learning from the ‘Opioid crisis’ in the United States. Moving towards that direction, I begin with a brief description of the genesis of this crisis, primarily to ensure that all my readers are on the same page to feel the gravity of the situation.
The genesis of Opioid crisis:
The terms – ‘Opioid epidemic’ or ‘Opioid crisis’are generally referred to rapid increase in consumption of prescription and nonprescription Opioid drugs in America that began in the late 1990s. It is noteworthy, until the mid-1980s and early 1990s, physicians seldom prescribed opiates because of the fear of addicting patients. This was established in several studies, such as, the July-August 2016 Article, titled ‘Drug Company Compensated Physicians Role in Causing America’s Deadly Opioid Epidemic: When Will We Learn?’
In the ninety’s, as the above paper indicates, some “medical experts and thought leaders led by the neurologist and pain specialist Russell Portenoy, MD, proclaimed that the risks of addiction to Opioids were minimal and that not treating pain was cruel and even amounted to medical negligence.” Incidentally, Russell Portenoy was at that time known as the “King of Pain” and was the Chairman of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care at Beth Israel Hospital in New York.
The paper also articulated, “Portenoy and his acolytes wrote articles and gave lectures to physicians about the safety of narcotics. They repeatedly cited a study by Porter and Jick in ‘The New England Journal of Medicine’ that stated that only one percent of patients treated with narcotics became addicted.” It is a different matter, as the authors indicated, the above trial was ‘not a controlled study at all. It consisted of a short 101-word one paragraph letter to the editor.’
Understandably, the rapid spread of Opioid use in America commenced on the following years. As The author highlighted: “To this day in most American hospitals, nurses on their daily rounds, ask patients to rate their pain on a scale of one to ten and then may administer a narcotic accordingly.”
HHS corroborates the fact:
In line with the finding of the above paper, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) traces the origin of the U.S. Opioid Epidemic in the late 1990s.…continue reading…
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