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How Portugal eased its opioid epidemic, while U.S. drug deaths skyrocketed (www.npr.org)

submitted 6 months ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

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[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 15 points 6 months ago

Yeah, this was an easy one to call. It’s repeated in other countries as well.

One other factor that they don’t mention is that the surge in street opioids corresponded to a crackdown on doctors writing opioid prescriptions. I saw this coming when I was doing policy analysis and looking at unintended consequences in complex systems. I don’t remember much about what degree of a surge we saw in prescriptions, but I do remember all of those “pill mill” headlines. That always struck me as a pretty manufactured crisis - but even if not, the crackdown certainly didn’t improve the situation.