Several years ago, after minor surgery, the doc sent me home with a bottle of demerol and instructions to take them regularly. I decided to wait for bad pain to hit. It never did. As in, I didn't need so much as a baby aspirin. I don't, I should note, have an incredibly high pain threshold (it's actually embarrassingly low) and I didn't need this highly addictive drug.
Odds are, my doc wasn't behaving maliciously, but the bottom line is this: Doctors must be held accountable for over-prescribing pain meds. The DEA's "Cases Against Doctors" report reveals that Florida is #6 in the country for DEA physician arrests. We have almost 53% more than the state average. We're fifth in the state for drug overdose deaths.
Overall, when doctors get arrested for over-prescribing, it's usually for opioids — one in three arrests are for oxycodone and one in four arrests are for hydrocodone. Doctors prescribe enough hydrocodone, by the way, to supply 22,000 adults with a 5 mg dose, eight times a day, for a year.
Read the full study here.
This article appears in May 10-17, 2018.