Consumers of illicit substances, such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin, are more exposed to the risks of abuse of painkillers, according to a study.
In the United States, overdoses of painkillers kill as much as road accidents. The leading cause of death among young people, the abuse of opiates (codeine, oxycodone, morphine, etc.) is a public health priority. Significant efforts are being made in research on this form of drug addiction.
A new one University of Georgia study, published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, lifts the veil on one of the mechanisms at the origin of the misuse of analgesics. The work focused on data from 13,000 Americans, collected in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
“Man or woman, rich or poor …”
According to the analysis of these data, there is a very strong link between the misuse of analgesics and the consumption of illicit substances. “Man or woman, black or white, rich or poor, we find the same particularity,” said the author who carried out the work, Orion Mowbray, in a press release. If a person uses drugs, he or she has a very high risk of developing painkiller misuse ”.
This observation had already been made in a previous study carried out by the Centers for Disease Control, which had shown a strong association between heroin use and abuse of painkillers.
This new work points to another determining factor in the misuse of opiates, which concerns the means by which consumers obtain these available prescription drugs. They show that people aged 50 and over obtain painkillers from several prescribers, while young consumers get them from friends, family members, or traffickers.
Overdoses up 183%
One of the objectives is to better understand the origin of the medical prescriptions which participate in the misuse of analgesics by the consumers, while the mortality induced by the abuse of prescription opioid analgesics has increased by more than 400% in women. since 1999 and 265% for men. The authors recommend in particular to detect addictive behaviors before prescribing these painkillers.
In France, the consumption of opiate painkillers is undoubtedly less strong, in particular because their access is much more restricted. The DRAMES (Deaths in Relation to Drug and Substance Abuse) study reported 376 deaths in 2010, due to heroin overdoses, opioid substitution treatments and pain medication. But the data on this phenomenon are imprecise and not exhaustive.
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