How the medical profession can solve the opioid crisis
How the medical profession can solve the opioid crisis | MEDS | APRIL 14, 2016
“A blueprint toward an answer
The opioid and heroin epidemics will require a combination of solutions. Legislative and regulatory reform, such as the FDA’s recently announced plan to review its process for approval of increasingly powerful opioid painkillers, will be important. So will intensified enforcement measures against “pill mills” and the few physicians engaged in reckless and excessive prescribing. Broad educational initiatives for physicians and public service announcements for consumers can help everyone understand the risks from opioids. And expanded use of alternative methods of pain control for chronic, non-cancer discomfort will allow patients 
to address their pain needs in safer ways.
In the future, all physicians will need to query patients about past or current drug and alcohol use before prescribing opioid medication, and when appropriate check state prescription drug monitoring programs. And when they prescribe an opioid, it should be at the lowest effective dose, and only be for the quantity likely to be required.
Across the nation, we will need physicians to refer patients with substance-abuse disorders to effective substance-abuse treatment services. And in conjunction, patients currently addicted to opioid painkillers or heroin should use FDA-approved alternatives such as methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone.
We can reverse this opioid crisis. But the time for us to take action is now, before thousands more die unnecessarily. Maybe next year, for starters, our televisions could show a different kind of Super Bowl commercial about opioids. A public-service ad could warn about the serious risks of chronic, high-dose opioid use, and alert Americans to the alternatives available. In trying to stop this epidemic, that would truly get us all closer to crossing the goal line.””
