State laws which are created to control opioid abuse have little effect on misuse or overdose cases among disabled Medicare beneficiaries, a new study has found.
About 81 laws designed to curb overdoses on potent opioid drugs such as Vicodin and Oxycontin were passed between 2006 and 2012. Researchers found that 45 percent of disabled workers were still abusing opioid drugs in 2012 despite new regulations and drug-monitoring programs.
Moreover, about 8 percent of these disabled Medicare beneficiaries got their opioid medications from four or more physicians.
According to lead researcher Ellen Meara from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, there is currently no evidence that the recent laws were able to prevent prescription opioids misuse.
"Our findings indicate they don't do much to curb opioid abuse or overdose, at least in this vulnerable population. States might invest more resources in evaluating the effectiveness of legislation," added Meara.
Disabled workers have complex needs, both medical and social. Apart from having higher risks of developing mental illnesses including depression, this demographic also has high poverty rates. Given these factors, they are at risk of misusing opioid drugs.
Meara said that the opioid abuse laws passed between 2006 and 2012 failed to address the fundamental pain and isolation that lead many Americans toward opioids in their search for relief from the pain.
New or tougher laws will begin to turn the opioid epidemic around, eventually. Meara shared her optimism that the legal solutions can help reduce the rates of opioid abuse, misuse and related deaths.
"Unfortunately, the epidemic is spreading and changing rapidly, while the legal response is slow and blunt," said Meara.
The researchers analyzed the 2006 to 2012 Medicare data of disabled beneficiaries between the ages of 21 and 64. Apart from not finding law-related reductions in opioid usage and overdose, they discovered that 0.3 percent of the participants received treatments for non-fatal overdose cases in 2012. The rate was the same in the years prior to the enactment of tougher laws.
The findings are published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
John Hopkins Center of Drug Safety and Effectiveness co-director Dr. G. Caleb Alexander said that the extensive availability of these potent painkillers has resulted in an epidemic of not just drug addiction but also injury and death.
Alexander, who wasn't involved in the study, highlighted that the U.S. population makes up 5 percent of the global population. And yet, it accounts for 80 percent of the global opioid consumption.
