Deputy Drug Czar Says Doctors Play Role in Pain Pill Overdoses

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In an editorial that accompanied the release of a new study on prescription pain pill overdoses, Thomas McLellean, the deputy director of White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, noted that doctors should re-examine how they manage pain in their patients.

“It is easy to blame the growing epidemic of opioid overdose and death on manipulative patients who misrepresent pain symptoms to obtain drugs to abuse or sell,” McLellan wrote, saying the study identifies a “potential role for physicians” in the epidemic.

“Smarter, more responsible practices are the only hope to avoid tragic, avoidable deaths.”

The editorial served as a buttress to the study published in the current Annals of Internal Medicine, which studied 10,000 Group Health patients with prescriptions for pain medicine for such ailments as arthritis and back pain. The research suggests that patients with higher opioid doses were 9 times more likely to overdose than those patients with loser doses.

Dr. Michael Von Korff, senior investigator for the Group Health study noted that for every fatal overdose there were seven non fatal poisonings that were considered medically serious. Doctors are prescribing more pain pills at higher doses than ever before. In the United States, deaths from prescription pain pill overdose tripled from 1999 to 2006. In Washington state, pill overdose deaths now eclipse car accidents as the primary cause of accidental death.

In his editorial, the deputy drug czar concluded, “It is easy to blame the growing epidemic of opioid overdose and death on manipulative patients who misrepresent pain symptoms to obtain drugs to abuse or sell,” McLellan wrote, saying the study identifies a “potential role for physicians” in the epidemic.

“Smarter, more responsible practices are the only hope to avoid tragic, avoidable deaths.”

Kevin Dugan
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