VICTORIA, Canada—We are in the midst of a deadly drug epidemic so severe and widespread that few people in North America will remain untouched by it. A dramatic change in how physicians are trained is required to get the epidemic under control.
Our narcotic abuse and death rates are likely at their highest in modern history.
Critics have begun pointing the finger at the medical system and its prescribers—well-meaning doctors and specialists who’ve been giving too many patients excessively powerful opioid medications to deal with modest pain. But we should dig deeper and look at the relationship between the medical education system and pharmaceutical companies.
Typically, the suggestion of an epidemic is hyperbolic. But it doesn’t seem so in this case. Recently, Dr. Perry Kendall, provincial health officer in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, said that his province has a bona fide “public health emergency” on its hands, mostly due to the alarming number of overdose deaths linked to prescription opioids.
Opioids include prescription narcotics like Oxycontin, Hydromorph Contin, and fentanyl (which some say is 100 times stronger than morphine). Kendall said that there have been more than 200 opioid-related overdoses so far this year in B.C., and if those numbers continue, there'll be 800 by the end of the year.
What’s happening in B.C. is just a microcosm of what is happening across Canada, where we have some of the highest rates of prescription opioid consumption in the world. From 2006 to 2011, use of opioids in Canada rose by 32 percent and that rise has continued unabated, despite efforts to slow it down.
The United States is also in full-on damage control mode, trying to stem the incredible number of deaths due to opioids. In 2012, there were 259 million prescriptions written for opioids—enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills. Since 2000, the overdose death rate in the United States has risen by 200 percent and there were nearly 19,000 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2014. A few weeks ago, I sat in a room while Dr. Vivek Murthy, the new surgeon general of the United States, told the assembled crowd that he was driven to make the opioid epidemic a top priority in his administration due to the devastation he’s seen in communities all across the country.
