ORIGINS OF
THE CRISIS
THE CRISIS
Dr. Chris Johnson says the opioid epidemic was not an accident, but the result of this.
What is deliberate systemic failure within medicine and industry?
Newly released DEA data shows that this many opioid pills were distributed in the U.S. from 2006 to 2012.
What are 76 billion pills?
Pain was redefined in the 1990s as this new “vital sign.”
What is the fifth vital sign?
This pharmaceutical company introduced OxyContin in 1996.
What is Purdue Pharma?
The DEA database that tracks every opioid pill from manufacturer to pharmacy is called this.
What is ARCOS?
Although the U.S. has only about 4.5% of the world’s population, it consumes roughly this share of the world’s opioid pain relievers.
What is about 30 percent?
During those years, opioid distribution was so vast that it amounted to roughly this many pills per American per year.
What are about 36 pills?
While explaining the origin of the word somnolent, Dr. Johnson jokes that he “flew through” the first nine volumes of this ancient literary work.
What is Ovid’s Metamorphoses?
OxyContin was marketed as safer because it used this drug-delivery feature.
What is extended-release formulation?
These types of communities were disproportionately impacted by opioid oversupply.
What are rural communities?
Between 1992 and 2012, opioid prescriptions in the United States did this.
What is tripled?
These two drugs accounted for roughly three-quarters of all opioid pill shipments to pharmacies.
What are oxycodone and hydrocodone?
The study behind the “less than 1%” claim examined patients experiencing this kind of pain.
What is acute, short-term pain?
This federal law made the FDA increasingly dependent on pharmaceutical industry funding.
What is the Prescription Drug User Fee Act?
Medical-assisted treatment reduces overdose risk by roughly this proportion.
What is about half?
According to Johnson, today’s heroin and fentanyl crisis followed directly from this earlier medical practice.
What is widespread prescription opioid use?
This state had the highest per-person opioid pill distribution between 2006 and 2012.
What is West Virginia?
Despite prescribing opioids indefinitely, the longest studies supporting their use for chronic pain lasted about this long.
What is 12 weeks?
Johnson compares free starter coupons for OxyContin to this “creepy” figure offering a first taste for free.
Who is the creepy guy outside a high school selling drugs?
According to Johnson, American medicine is primarily incentivized to sell this rather than produce long-term health.
What are health care services?
Johnson emphasizes that people “saw it coming,” but continued opioid expansion anyway due to this overriding priority.
What are profit-driven and corporate incentives in medicine?
By 2016, opioid overdoses were killing roughly this many Americans each year—equivalent to multiple World Trade Centers.
What is about 50,000 deaths?
Johnson identifies the leap from weak observational data to widespread prescribing as a failure of this core professional principle.
What is medical ethics?
The scope of opioid litigation now exceeds this earlier landmark public health lawsuit.
What is the tobacco litigation?
Johnson argues addiction should be understood primarily as this, not a moral failure.
What is a biologically driven condition shaped by systems and incentives?