Despite the growing public concern over opioid addiction and the epidemic of drug overdoses in America, more people are taking them, NPR reports.
More than half—57 percent—of the people polled by the news organization and Truven Health Analytics had been prescribed narcotic painkillers, such as Vicodin or Percocet, at some point. That’s a 3 percentage-point increase since the poll was last conducted by NPR in 2014 and 7 percentage-point bump from six years ago. The recent survey was part of a joint effort to get a sense of national attitudes on various health issues.
Of those people who had been prescribed opioids, the same poll showed a small dip (about 1 percent) in their worries about addiction and other concerns. At the same time, more people who had never been prescribed opioids said they had reservations about narcotic painkillers.
According to the CDC, almost half of all fatal overdoses in the United States are from prescribed opioids. And one in four people who receive an opioid prescription end up struggling with addiction.
“The drugs are like a two-edged sword,” noted Ron Ozminkowski, of IBM Watson Health, who worked with Truven on the poll. “They’re great for people who really need them for heavy-duty pain, but they come with addiction risk and side effects.”
The sharp contrast in the concerns of those who have tried opioids and those who have not speaks to the difficulty of educating the public. It’s a crucial part of the effort to combat the epidemic of opioid addiction in the United States, which the CDC says is fueled by opioid prescriptions.
—RealClearLife
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