Over the last year, in communities all across the country, 1.4 million Americans started abusing opioids. Every day, 51 more people are killed by an overdose. We’ve seen enough data to know that this is a crisis.
Why are so many people with no history of drug use becoming addicted to opioids? One of the most culpable root causes — one that we can quickly fix, if Congress and the medical community are willing to act — is the over-prescription of opioids. Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced new guidelines for medical professionals about when and how much opioid medication is appropriate to prescribe for chronic pain. These guidelines are a necessary step, but they don’t fully account for one of the main sources of new addictions: over-prescriptions for acute pain. Our bipartisan bill, the Preventing Overprescribing for Pain Act, would help fix this.
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