U.S. and Canadian patients were more likely than Swedes to fill prescriptions for opioids after a surgery. They also received higher doses of the painkillers.
Starting in 2000, Australia began approving and subsidizing certain opioids for use in chronic, non-cancer pain. Those approvals coincided with an increase in opioid consumption, which nearly quadrupled between 1990 and 2014, says Sydney University researcher Emily Karanges. Just like in the U.S., as opioid prescriptions rose, so did fatal overdoses. Opioid-related deaths jumped from 439 in 2006 to 1,119 in 2016 — a rise of 2.2 to 4.7 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Most of those deaths were related to prescription opioids rather than illegal opioids such as heroin.
“We’re living in a country that is oblivious to what’s going on,” she says. “Why aren’t we learning from America’s mistakes? Why don’t we learn?”When Rustie Lassam thinks of the drug companies that pumped opioids into Australia’s market, she thinks of her infant son’s agonized wails as he went through withdrawal.
In Australia, pharmaceutical companies by law cannot directly advertise to consumers, but are free to market the drugs to medical professionals. And they have done so, aggressively and effectively, by sponsoring swanky conferences, running doctors’ training seminars, funding research papers, giving money to pain advocacy groups and meeting with doctors to push the drugs for chronic pain.
well i know where im going to vacation to ;)