13 May 2019 National Prevention Week – Preventing Prescription and Opioid Drug Misuse

Opioid abuse and overdose has become the defining public health crisis of our time. On average, 130 Americans die every day of opioid overdose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

This week is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) National Prevention Week. Today’s focus is on Preventing Prescription and Opioid Drug Misuse.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the cost of the crisis is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, treatment, and criminal justice involvement.

There are some solutions that prevention experts are working on. One is drop boxes for leftover prescription drug at law enforcement agencies and pharmacies. When teens abuse prescription drugs, more than half of the time they get the drugs from friends and family, sometimes stealing drugs out of a medicine cabinets. To see drop box locations in the East Texas area, visit East Texas Rx.

Another strategy is encouraging doctors to adhere to the CDC prescribing guidelines. These include things like talking to the patient about the risks, keeping the prescription short anywhere from 3-14 days depending on the situation) and checking a database of opioid prescriptions, the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, to cut down on doctor shopping.

In East Texas, there are 209 controlled substance prescriptions written for every 100 people.

Unfortunately, “roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and “about 80 percent of people who use heroin first misused prescription opioids.” By educating the public on the risk of addiction when opioids are misused, hopefully that percentage will decrease.

If you have leftover prescription drugs at home, it’s important that you dispose of the ones you no longer need, and to monitor the ones that you are still currently taking. By working together, we can all do our part to help reduce the impact of the opioid crisis.