In 2012 there were 793 million doses of opioids prescribed in Ohio

6--2-17      

In 2012 there were 793 million doses of opioids prescribed in Ohio, enough to supply every man, woman, and child, with 68 pills each.  Roughly 20 percent of the state’s population was prescribed an opioid in 2016.  And Ohio leads the nation in overdose deaths....
In the years since Purdue Pharma has taken steps to reduce abuse, according to Noah of the University of Florida.  Purdue Pharma changed its policies and made clearer warnings about how addictive the pills were and also came out with a less-easily-abused version of Oxycontin, Noah said.  That could make it difficult to allege that the company is still behaving in a way that creates a nuisance....
Noah argues:  doctors were too loose with their prescribing practices.  The scientific community published and depended on letters and papers that downplayed the risk of addiction from opioids.  (Many doctors depended on a five-sentence letter from 1980 that said that the majority of a sample of hospital patients who had been prescribed opioids did not get addicted.)  Pharmacies and distributors allegedly failed to report suspicious orders for controlled substances from patients or doctors....The Drug Enforcement Admin. did not impose quotas on how many opioids were manufactured.  “There are any number of actors who could have tried harder,” Noah said.  (This year DEA is cutting legal opioid manufacture 25%.)   https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/lawsuit-pharmaceutical-companies-opioids/529020/
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8-3-16      Spain had the highest use of opioids for non-medical purposes, and Great Britain had the second-highest.  Germany had the lowest estimates not only for opioids but for sedatives and stimulants too....Opioid abuse is occurring even though doctors tend to be more cautious in Europe about prescribing painkillers, Novak says.  "A European treatment model won't reach for an opiate until it's the last chance," he says. 

This is probably among one of the reasons that researchers found most people obtained drugs from family or friends and sometimes from internet pharmacies.  Opioid abuse is occurring even though doctors tend to be more cautious in Europe about prescribing painkillers, Novak says.  "A European treatment model won't reach for an opiate until it's the last chance," he says.   https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-08-03/european-union-sees-alarming-rates-of-prescription-drug-abuse

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The review looked at survey data from young people in Canada, Australia and Europe, and found nonmedical prescription drug use among teenagers and people in their 20s that is comparable to the United States.  It also found high prescription abuse among high school and college students in the Middle East — specifically, Beirut and Saudi Arabia — and in China, where a survey conducted in southwest China found that one in 10 students have tried prescription drugs nonmedically at least once in their lives....Today, overdoses account for more deaths than car accidents or gun violence.

Doctors in the United States began prescribing opioids — powerful narcotics that include pill-form painkillers such as methadone, oxycodone and hydrocodone — to treat pain at unprecedented rates in the 1990s.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2017/02/09/the-opioid-epidemic-could-turn-into-a-pandemic-if-were-not-careful/?utm_term=.f8af69907b74

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1-12-17      The second, clashing story goes, again, crudely, like this:  Opiate use is climbing because people feel more distressed and disconnected and are turning to anesthetics to cope with their psychological pain.

Addiction rates are not spread evenly across the United States, as you would expect if chemical hooks were the primary cause.  On the contrary, addiction is soaring in areas such as the Rust Belt, the South Bronx and the forgotten towns of New England, where people there say they are lonelier and more insecure than they have been in living memory.     http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hari-prescription-drug-crisis-cause-20170112-story.html

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6-6-17   "With only small volumes needed to produce many thousands of street doses, new synthetic opioids are easy to conceal and transport, posing a challenge for drug-control agencies and a potentially attractive commodity for organized crime," the European Drug Report said.

On average, the agency identified more than one new psychoactive substance coming onto the EU black market each week in 2016. At the end of last year, it was monitoring more than 620 new psychoactive drugs that had appeared in recent years.  https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-06-powerful-opioids-overdose-deaths-eu.html

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6-6-17   Almost one in three drugs overdoses in Europe were recorded in the UK as the continent’s rate of drug deaths rose for a third year in a row, according to the European drugs agency.   https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/06/almost-one-in-three-drugs-overdoses-in-europe-occur-in-the-uk