New DEA Report: Prescription Drugs Are Still to Blame for the Most Overdose Deaths

Urgent care operators and occupational medicine providers alike should be aware that prescription opioids continue to be found to blame more often than other substances in overdose deaths in the United States. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s just-released 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment reveals that controlled prescription drugs are the second most commonly abused substance, making the number of deaths slightly out of proportion to the incidence of abuse. The DEA report shows fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have led to more overdose deaths than other opioids in the United States. The sobering data are a reminder of why multiple federal and state agencies, as well as numerous medical societies, urge clinicians to employ narcotic pain medications as a last resort; for noncancer pain, that means prescribing the lowest effective dose and the least number of days’ therapy that is expected to provide relief for the patient. For more on what you can do to curb the ongoing national crisis, read The Potential Role of Urgent Care in Addressing the Opiate Epidemic in the JUCM archive.