Since 1999, the death rate from opioid drug overdose in the United States has been on the rise. The rate nearly doubled—from 1 to 1.8 per 100,000 people—between 2013 and 2014 alone. Today the number of drug overdose deaths per year far surpasses the number of deaths from motor vehicle accidents—the main cause of injury death in the United States—and some two million Americans suffer from a substance-abuse disorder involving synthetic prescription opioid pain relievers. The epidemic has thus far shown no signs of slowing, propelling opioid addiction and overdose to the forefront of U.S. public health concerns.
Together with heroin, synthetic opioids, including prescription drugs (e.g., fentanyl and tramadol) and illegally manufactured drugs (e.g., illicit fentanyl), are the main substances of abuse behind the U.S. epidemic. The drugs are highly addictive owing to their actions at opioid receptors in the brain. Opioid receptors mediate neural pathways that control pain relief and euphoria, as well as so-called reward pathways, which trigger feelings of pleasure and are reinforced by the repeated use of opioids, thereby precipitating addiction.
In response to the epidemic, U.S. public health officials encouraged physicians to restrict opioid prescribing, which had increased dramatically since the 1990s. At that time, concern about the impact of chronic pain on patients’ quality of life led physicians to prescribe opioids for conditions other than terminal diseases, such as advanced cancer, for which they previously had been reserved. Studies later revealed, however, that prescription opioids can adversely affect health and increase the risk of bone fractures and heart attack. Public health officials also promoted expanded access to naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdose, and encouraged physicians to use state prescription drug monitoring programs, which gave physicians access to information on patients’ previous prescriptions for controlled substances, facilitating the identification of individuals at increased risk of opioid abuse.