The legal path to heroin addiction

Heroin’s deadly shift from fringe to mainstream use has been largely tied to the rise of prescription painkillers.

People who are addicted to prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2014, 94 percent of people in treatment for opioid addictions said they switched to heroin from prescription painkillers because the prescriptions were “far more expensive and harder to obtain,” according to JAMA Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed journal.

The heroin epidemic and rise of prescription painkiller use has caught the attention of politicians, organizations and society as a whole in the past few years.

The CDC released new guidelines for doctors who prescribe opioid pain medication.

Locally, the Medical Society of Sedgwick County organized a group of physicians to study pain management and then inform other medical providers about best practices to avoid prescription opioid abuse.

Sarah Fischer, prevention program director at the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, said a state workgroup was looking at drug abuse and would publish a report about its findings in the next month.

Among the various brands of prescription opioids, OxyContin is one of the most recognizable.

Here’s a snapshot of the rise of OxyContin in the U.S.:

▪ 1995: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves OxyContin for pharmaceutical use.

▪ 1996: The owner of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, starts an “aggressive marketing campaign” for OxyContin as a first line of treatment for pain.

▪ 2000: Initial reports surface about OxyContin abuse and diversion. That includes illegal sales of OxyContin and increased crushing, inhaling or injecting of tablets.

▪ 2001: The federal government begins to crack down on OxyContin prescriptions because of misuse.

▪ 2013: The FDA approves a new chemical composition of oxycodone that prevents users from chewing, snorting or injecting the pill.

▪ 2013: Prescription opiate overdose deaths increase 265 percent among men and 400 percent among women since 1999.

Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

This story was originally published January 30, 2016 at 3:28 PM with the headline "The legal path to heroin addiction."