Bioethics in Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Number 1

35 Bioethics in Faith and Practice ⦁ 2019 ⦁ Volume 4 ⦁ Number 1 medications is “emblematic of a health care system that incentivizes quick, simplistic answer to complex physical and mental health needs,” and that “simplistic measures to cut access to opioid offer illusory solutions to this multidimensional society It is clear that the opioid epidemic is one that is fueled not only by improper treatment of addicts, but also by a predisposition of a large demographic of the United States to addiction as a result of things such as mass trauma, isolation, and learned helplessness. As these factors continue, no amount of criminal justice reform will cure the problem. Instead, the approach to the war on drugs needs to be one that comes from many angles and addresses many problems at once, rather than trying to use any one plan. In an article published in the Journal of Pain Research, Schatman describes a discrepancy between opioid marketing and observed effects. One particular analgesic, OxyContin, was marketed by Purdue Pharma as having a less than 1% chance risk of addiction. While this number seems promising and would advocate for the use of OxyContin in many situations, the same study noted that in 2008 alone, the number of non- medical users of OxyContin increased by almost half a million. This article poses that this deception in the marketing of various opioid medications could be a strong contributor to the great growth of the opioid crisis in America in recent years. 19 The same article looks at the fact that while many options for curbing the opioid crisis have been introduced to the public and the medical profession in the past few years, many of them show few or no benefits for patients themselves and a lack of actual positive change in the actual statistics of the crisis. One alternative to many of the traditional methods of curbing opioid use that the article discusses is the use of tamper-resistant/abuse-deterrent formulations (TR/ADFs) that have the potential to reduce levels of overdoses, addiction cases, and deaths. ADFs specifically were extremely effective in decreasing risk for 19 Michal Schatman, “The Health Insurance Industry: Perpetuating the Opioid Crisis through Policies of Cost- containment and Profitability,” Journal of Pain Research 8, (2015): 153-158.