Doctors ‘overprescribing’ opioids isn’t the cause of the overdose epidemic — and it never was By Richard A. "Red" LawhernJuly 11, 2024

https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/11/doctors-overprescribing-opioids-didnt-cause-overdose-epidemic/?utm_campaign=morning_rounds&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_ZpQ4ImfgxM4w1kXuJSDZvWZN4gqgRJwDHBF6ONGE47BLi3qfpLGfZjqCS3jTKZ6RcByS-EzRGU-5L1Xz4Slw00BrcyQ&_hsmi=315250855&utm_content=315250855&utm_source=hs_email Did overprescription of opioids actually drive the addiction crisis? As the opioid crisis spread across the U.S., overprescription of legal drugs was never the problem, patient advocate and researcher Richard Lawhern writes in a First Opinion essay. This story line has been perpetuated by the federal government, he argues, but it can actually be explained in part by a sort of clerical error. For years, the CDC and the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics were misattributing deaths involving illegal street fentanyl to deaths caused by “prescription” drugs. When this error was corrected, Lawhern says, the number of death certificates that mentioned prescription drugs dropped by half. Read more on Lawhern’s surprising take on the role physicians did and didn’t play in the opioid crisis.