Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing

A critically important paper in the journal Frontiers in Pain Medicine concludes that while the rationale for reducing opioid prescriptions to minimize overdose deaths was sound between 2006-2010, during the ensuing decade the opposite was true. Reducing opioid prescriptions during this time dramatically increased deaths and hospitalizations. In other words, what worked 15 years ago is an unmitigated disaster at this time.
Last year the American Medical Association directly challenged the CDC's disastrous Guidance for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, which was issued in 2016. Not surprisingly, Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP), a group that was (for some mysterious reason) directly involved with the CDC, responded defensively. Here are my comments on PROP's disingenuous rebuttal.
It's been more than obvious that, despite what you hear in the news, it is fentanyl – not Vicodin – that's killing tens of thousands each year. But a new article in National Vital Statistics Reports makes this more than obvious. Just as obvious is the horrible damage caused by deeply-flawed policies in the past five years. Here is the smoking gun.