Trump declares opioid crisis a national public health emergency

What is an opioid?  Opioids are a class of medications used to treat pain.  The classic opioid is morphine.  Morphine is a natural product that was first made from the poppy plant.  There are medications that are also opioids such as: hydrocodone, oxycodone, and fentanyl.  There are pills that are combinations of different medications.  For example, Percocet is a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen.  Vicodin is combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen.  Many people do not know that medications have two names.  The brand name and the generic name.  For example, acetaminophen is the same thing as Tylenol, acetaminophen is generic name and Tylenol is the brand name.

Why would anyone take an opioid medication?  Opioids work well to help relief pain.  Pain from surgery, a broken bone or cancer pain can be treated with opioids.  Ideally, someone who is in pain that cannot be treated with over the counter pain medication like ibuprofen or acetaminophen, will be prescribed a short course of opioids.  The problem comes up when people need pain medication for a long time.

What if someone has rheumatoid arthritis or chronic cancer pain?  Some people have persistent pain that does not go away.  This a time that some physicians will prescribe opioids for a long time.

What’s the problem?  The problem is long term, people become tolerant to the opioids.  This means the body gets used to the medication and it doesn’t work as well.  In the past, the physicians were told by government agencies that they should just keep increasing the dose of the of the opioids because the drug companies said very high doses of the opioids did not cause any problems.  This is not true.  High opioid doses do cause people to die.  That leads us to the current problem of the opioid epidemic.

What about balance?  Naturally, some people do need opioid medication.  For example, it is unreasonable to deny a person dying of cancer opioid medication that can help their pain.  Other cases are a gray zone.  How much is too much, will cutting access to opioid medication cause unnecessary suffering?  These are the questions physicians, law enforcement and government officials are grappling with.