Hidden beneath our discussions about the opiate epidemic is the harm created by the contradictory, asymmetric approach taken by medical leadership and policymakers towards how physicians prescribe opiates for pain versus how they treat opiate addiction with medications, specifically buprenorphine.
The imbalance is transparent. Based on 2012 data, nearly all 1 million physicians could prescribe prescription opiates. This resulted in over 259 million prescriptions being written for opioid painkillers in the United States, enough for each adult to have at least one prescription. That same year, less than 23,000 physicians could prescribe buprenorphine—the mainstay of medication-assisted treatment for people addicted to opiates outside of overwhelmed specialized treatment centers—and accordingly fewer than half of the 2.3 million Americans abusing or addicted to opiates received needed medication-assisted treatment.
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