Deaths from Prescription Opioids Not Evenly Distributed

Last November, the CDC issued a report detailing the rise of prescriptions for opioid (narcotic) pain killers such as oxycodone (Percocet, Oxycontin), hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco), methadone, morphine (MS Contin), fentanyl patches (Duragesic), and others, from 1999-2008. As expected, prescriptions for these medications have increased pretty dramatically. Here's the chart from that report, showing sales of opioid pain relievers (OPR), admission for addiction treatment related to OPR and OPR deaths per 100,000 persons. Basically, sales more than tripled, treatment admission quadrupled and deaths almost tripled. Since 2008, these trends have continued if not accelerated. In Minnesota for instance treatment admissions for opioid addiction are now greater than that for cocaine, methamphetamine, cannabis or other non-alcohol drugs. (Alcohol of course, continues to be the elephant in the room, with all indicators much higher than all other drugs combined.)

However, the rates for these indicators are not evenly distributed across the states. Here are two graphs from the same report showing rates across the US. What they show is that the rates for OPR sales and rates for overdose deaths vary widely across the country. For the most part, the rates of sales and deaths track together although there are exceptions (Oregon, Hawaii for example.) The national rate for overdose deaths is 11.9/100,000 but rates vary from 5.5 in Nebraska to a whopping 27 in New Mexico, a five-fold difference. Of note, nearly all of the deaths are in people taking them for medical purposes and the rates of non-medical use are low across the country. What these figures indicate is that there is no single solution for the entire country. Rather, the approaches need to be tailored to the particular states and regions with the highest figures. Not surprisingly, given the number of older adults living there, Florida tops the country for example in kilgrams of OPR sold.  However, the overdose death rate is 8th highest. New Mexico, however, with the highest overdose death rate, has OPR sales lower than the national average. Unfortunately, the federal government has taken a blanket approach focused on training physicians, which suggests that the appearance of doing something is more important than actually doing something that works.