KevinMD: I am a doctor, but I didn’t cause the opioid epidemic

[Major Nikon]

23. It's not really nitpicking

For one thing the CDC's use of statistics is extremely misleading and their recommendations are extremely misguided.

Right on their web page you will see the following:

The United States is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic.

Opioids (including prescription opioid pain relievers and heroin) killed more than 28,000 people in 2014, more than any year on record. At least half of all opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid.

At best these figures are extremely misleading, and at worst they are simply outright lies. Believe it or not, although certainly not impossible, it's extremely difficult to overdose on opiods. Ask anyone what killed Philip Seymour Hoffman and they will tell you his cause of death was an overdose on opiods. This just isn't true. His actual cause of death was mixing other drugs with opiods, which is extremely dangerous. When you look at those 28,000 people, the vast majority of them will be similar to Philip Seymour Hoffman. Many of them will be mixing opiods with alcohol. What about River Pheonix, Jim Morrison, John Belushi, Chris Farley, and Heath Ledger? Everyone knows they died from opioid overdose right? Nope, all of them died from mixing other drugs with opioids. Many other famous deaths attributed solely to opioids almost certainly were from drug mixing, but things like alcohol are often not included on death certificates, because after all alcohol is legal and presumed safe (not).

So you look at what the CDC recommends to do about the "opioid overdose epidemic". Nowhere do you see an effort to warn people about mixing opioids with other drugs, yet doing so would undoubtedly save far more lives than anything else they list. That's when you realize this isn't really about saving lives at all. It's simply about denying drugs to people in chronic pain who need them by telling them tough shit, and driving addicts into illicit heroin use out of fear they might get a buzz from a legally prescribed product.

http://www.rehabs.com/pro-talk-articles/the-ultimate-harm-reduction-guide-to-drug-mixing/