The phrase “opioid crisis” will forever be linked with the US, where the overprescription of these drugs, driven by aggressive marketing campaigns, caused millions to become addicted to painkillers. But the scale of the tragedy in America can overshadow dangers elsewhere. It is not the only country where trouble is brewing over these highly addictive drugs.
Two of those countries are England and Wales, where yearly deaths due to drug poisoning are at their highest since records began. At last count, in 2023, they stood at 5,448. And almost half of those, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), are due to opioids, a growing menace. Deaths from this group of chemical compounds, which includes heroin and morphine as well as synthetic newer versions like nitazene and fentanyl, have doubled in the last decade.
So, maybe the American problem was not caused by overprescription if the same thing is happening in a place without the overprescription?
Not that I know anything in particular but it’s an obvious question to ask, no?
It bloody well is over prescription.
The NHS pumps the elderly full of opioids, partially to keep them docile.
They gave them to my Mum in hospital, nearly killed her with them ( literally, some nurse overdosed her ). It prolonged her stay for months, because they sent her doolally ( of course ).
We got her off them and she had another 8 years in relative sanity.
“The UK is unlikely to ever develop an opioid problem the size of America’s”
a few sentences later –
“In 2019, the UK had the highest consumption rate of prescription opioids in the world”
It seems the writer’s desire to vilify “big pharma” while praising “our NHS” has resulted in an article that is utter tosh.
“Journalism”, eh?
See the doubling in the number of midazolam scripts our NHS prescribed to the the elderly in care homes during covid. Plus, GP’s cannot wait to give patients as many drugs as they can because “Bonuses can account for 8% to 20% of a GP’s salary, funded by taxpayer money”.
Ah, so that’s why I keep getting ‘invitations’ from my GP Surgery to come in for a friendly chat and check on my blood pressure/ cholesterol / blood sugar………..
And when you go in for your check how often do you actually see the GP? It’s usually a practice nurse that does the testing, but it’s the doctor that gets the bonus.
Went back to work 18 months ago and had to meet Train Driver medical standards (God only knows why, I wasn’t going to drive a train). Blood pressure high, which was no surprise because it had been high every time but one when I was a train driver (and that one time it was normal I thought there was something wrong with me). ‘Health Assistant’ said do you want to sort your BP with drugs or ‘lifestyle’ changes. So quick to offer drugs…….
I’d be interested to know why, if the UK prescribes opioids as willy-nilly as the US, their rate of drug deaths is so much greater (about 4 times as many deaths once population differences are accounted for).
I’ve sampled a fairly wide range of recreational narcotics, but have never been tempted by opioids. I did use tramadol during an incident of dental agony but it wasn’t much fun. Mind you, if I still lived in the UK I might be tempted to numb the pain with something stronger than booze….
…if I still lived in the UK I might be tempted to numb the pain with something stronger than booze….
I don’t know whether it was Steve Sailer who coined the phrase ‘ deaths of despair’ to describe the huge numbers of deaths from opioids but he’s certainly used it quite a bit.
Ibuprofen upsets my stomach, I’m afraid aspirin will too, and paracetamol works for some pains but not others. (No ruddy use for my back, alas.) So I sometimes take codeine (plus laxatives!). It works. I seem to have a non-addictive constitution so I just don’t worry about its being an opioid.
I seem to have a non-addictive constitution
Ditto: I’ve been given morphine and fentanyl in hospital as pain relief, for which they’re great, but never felt any desire at all to take them outside of that setting.
I was deemed highly resistant to fentanyl, so it looks as if I’m a lost cause.
Aye, I’m afraid ye’ll die in the end, son.
My first university GP was like that. “A bad twisted ankle, son. It would have been better to have snapped it. Now it’ll never be the same again.”
We have been warning about drugs since well before I was born and I’m ancient.
We should just legalise them all and then let nature sort it out.
I have some sympathy with that view Lord T. But the immediate issue is really with the NHS getting people addicted to these drugs.
Buy it from some yobbo on a street corner, then caveat emptor. Getting them from some half trained nurse or quack who barely speaks English while flat on one’s back is quite another matter.
Sure, as long as you pay for them.
But you just know there will be a push to pay for them out of the public purse for the indigent as soon as they’re legal.
I’m surprised, because whenever I’ve had a painful injury they’ve been very reluctant about giving me anything decent – and the reason is always the risk of addiction.
Tore my Achilles tendon (right through; took months to heal) and they wouldn’t let me have anything other than ibuprofen and paracetamol, because I’d be in pain for months and the risk of addiction was too high.
In contrast, someone I know who broke their ankle in France, strong painkillers straight away.
So who are they giving all these opioids to? Is it just the very old – in which case they must be giving them a hell of a lot to get us up to the highest rate in the world.
Is it all these ‘long term sick’ on benefits being prescribed them? That might explain places like Blackpool.
“highest consumption rate of prescription opioids in the world”
Were the opioids prescribed to the people who consumed them?
There’s a lot of selling out the back door and reselling stuff going on. Or straight out theft.
In low trust societies, you can no longer trust doctors because they’re either on the take or from another ethnic group that doesn’t like you:
A group of Michigan doctors prescribed opioids to addicts who in return submitted to painful back injections and other unnecessary treatments so that the doctors could bill the US government for over $450m (£359m; €397m), charges in federal court have asserted.
The alleged mastermind of the scheme was Rajendra Bothra, 77, who amassed $35m and bought his own private island, US prosecutors said. Bothra’s arrest brought news coverage in his native India, where in 1999 he was awarded one of the country’s highest civil honours, the Padma Shri.
This leads me to wonder why it is that English culture, apart from being notably self-effacing, is also notably un-predatory? I reckon it’s these qualities more than almost any other that enabled us to devise the modern state, modern economics and trustworthy trade that have done more than almost anything else to help humanity thrive. Tribal predation destroys all that.
Unpredatory? Really? Did you ever hear of a thing called the British Empire?
Twas for their own good. And that’s not entirely tongue-in-cheek.
Amongst ourselves, dope. As you well know, the Indians, Chinese and many others, sadly including the Yanks, happily prey on each other. Japs not so much, but even so, in general, traditional Brits are less predatory than them.
There’s an equivalent of Gresham’s Law in trust. Low trust drives out high. People from high trust societies can adapt to low trust when there’s no option, but low trust folks take a very long time to adapt to high trust outside the clan or family. Sometimes an infinite length of time.
All true. I was wondering how we Brits became so high-trust in the first place. There are other very high-trust societies (Orthodox Jews, for example) but they tend to be small in number. We are (were) surprisingly large scale.
We are an offshore island. Alfred created a navy to prevent invasions. So it is that we remained a high-trust society after travel faster than walking became widespread
Plausible. Similar applies to Japan. Other islands? Singapore? Taiwan? NZ? Oz?
“Overprescription” is a controller’s way of saying “allowing for agency and choice.” If I’m in cancer-pain, please, overprescribe. And if the pain goes on for too long with no hope of betterment, let me have my own “accident.”