Prescription Drug Addiction: Methadone Is The No. 1 Killer

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08/25/2008

 

The heroin-like painkiller methadone is the fastest-growing cause of narcotic

deaths, according to federal government statistics, and ranks high among drugs

implicated in the soaring rates of prescription drug addiction across the

country.

 

Methadone, which for decades has been used to replace heroin as an addiction

treatment, now causes more than twice as many deaths as heroin itself. And

because it is potent and long-lasting, and far less expensive than other

prescription painkillers, it has become more and more popular among family

physicians and other health care providers who hand it out for all kinds of

chronic pain.

 

But the problem, say experts, is that doctors are not sufficiently educated in

narcotics, and methadone is particularly complex and deadly. No two people

respond to methadone in the same way, so where one patient might seem okay,

another can die on the same dosage. And if it doesn't kill the patient, it can

rapidly lead to dependence and wind up in a full-blown, life-altering

prescription drug addiction.

 

In some areas of the country, methadone deaths now surpass deaths from oxycodone

painkillers such as OxyContin and Percocet and hydrocodone painkillers such as

Vicodin and Lortab. But whereas the majority of deaths from these other narcotic

painkillers come from illicit abuse of the drugs, nearly half of all deaths from

methadone result from taking methadone " as directed " on legitimate

prescriptions.

 

Labeling directions for methadone were dangerously incorrect for decades, and

were not updated until late 2006, long after thousands of cases of prescription

drug addiction and death were reported. The FDA, woefully lax in dealing with

physicians' ignorance about the using the drug properly, failed to recognize the

dangers that more widespread prescribing could bring about. Since the new

labeling information is only partially helpful, the FDA may require doctors to

take special classes on prescribing narcotics and methadone in particular.

 

According to the DEA, from 1998 to 2006 the number of methadone prescriptions

have increased by 700 percent, inundating parts of the country where it had

rarely been seen. Shipments of methadone across the country from manufacture

through commercial distribution channels, which are tracked by the DEA,

increased by 500 percent.

 

The result has been massive increases in methadone-related deaths, which the

feds say increased even more than the shipments. In Utah, where prescription

drug addiction is a state-wide epidemic, supplies of methadone shipping into the

state increased six-fold in the five years between 1997 and 2002, but deaths

from methadone increased 15-fold.

 

In Florida, where prescription drug addiction is also ravaging the population,

meticulously-kept death statistics reveal that methadone deaths more than

doubled in a space of just four years, jumping from 367 deaths in 2003 to 785

deaths in 2007.

 

It's clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that methadone, in spite of its

perceived power to help relieve serious chronic pain, is not the ideal solution.

The FDA needs to assign a higher priority to getting America's physicians into

advanced education classes on narcotics.

 

Even better, health care providers who really want to help their pain patients

find relief, and avoid the risk of killing or addicting them, should investigate

safer alternative treatments instead of automatically reaching for the

prescription pad. And for those already suffering from narcotic prescription

drug addiction, medical drug detox is the proper solution.

 

 

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