FEATURE STORY / OPIOIDS
The High Cost of Relying on Opioids
The story of Canada ’ s love affair with opioids as a quick and easy solution for pain management is a classic case of short-term gain and longterm pain . In Canada , over 2,000 deaths per year are associated with the use of prescription opioids — half of all drug-related deaths . Since 1999 , prescriptions for opioids have quadrupled , and drug-related deaths have risen alongside them . 2
Dr . David Juurlink ( Head , Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology , Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre ) in a recent keynote address at an Opioid Summit in Ottawa in 2016 said , “ If you tally the numbers over the last 15 or 20 years , about a quarter of a million people in the US have died from opioids — more than half of them from prescription opioids . We have looked at this in Ontario a couple of times and you can see that the trends are pretty unambiguous . Most people are dying accidentally as opposed to through suicide .”
A 2014 study found that rates of opioid-related deaths are increasing rapidly in Ontario and are concentrated among the young , leading to a substantial burden of disease . By 2010 , nearly one of every eight deaths among individuals aged 25 – 34 years was opioid-related . 3
In a presentation at the same 2016 Opioid Summit , chiropractor and researcher Dr . Jason Busse shared research which has found that “ 100 % of patients engaged in long-term opioid therapy will develop physical dependence , which means it will be very hard for them to stop or reduce their dose of opioids . They will also continue to develop tolerance , requiring higher and higher doses to achieve the same benefits .” 4
But addiction , overdose and death are far from the only negative consequences of opioid use . A 2016 American Medical Association investigation states ,
“ The focus on drug overdose may underestimate the harms of opioid analgesics . Opioids can cause or exacerbate sleep-disordered breathing , potentially
20 SPRING 2016 2017