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NAS: FDA should consider public health impact of opioid pain medications
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the brown university child and adolescent psychopharmacology update
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7567
pISSN - 1527-8395
DOI - 10.1002/cpu.30233
Subject(s) - heroin , opioid overdose , buprenorphine , methadone , public health , psychiatry , medicine , opioid , citation , oxycodone , naltrexone , pain medicine , abstinence , family medicine , psychology , (+) naloxone , nursing , drug , political science , law , receptor , anesthesiology
Many young people get their introduction to opioids legitimately — via pain medication after an injury. The next step may be obtaining “diverted” medications originally prescribed for someone else — even just taking them from their family medicine cabinet. Finally, they may get them from a friend or acquaintance. Ultimately, this path can lead to buying from the street, including heroin and fentanyl. Along the way, what could have helped them the most was treatment, which is still hard to find for young people with opioid use disorders. Abstinence‐based treatment is often a failure, which is why medication‐assisted treatment (MAT) with methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone is recommended as a first‐line treatment.