The opioid crisis was entirely created by a handful of domestic pharmaceutical companies, and solving it will require a comprehensive approach.
Kentucky’s Drug Overdose Report, released on June 13, confirmed the worsening problem finding that 2,250 Kentuckians died from drug overdoses in 2021. That’s a 14.5% increase from 2020.
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s recent op-ed, published in LinkNKY, rightly points out the grim statistics of the painful spike in opioid overdoses in Kentucky, and he deserves credit for using his leadership position to push for new funding to tackle this crisis. Unfortunately, his law-enforcement-only approach acknowledges just one part of a complex problem, while taking unsubstantiated digs at Mexicans and the Biden administration to score political points.
We need vigorous law enforcement to fight this epidemic, but that’s only part of the solution.
If we have learned anything from decades of “drug wars,” it is that there will always be a supplier if the demand is there. While preventing fentanyl from being smuggled into the U.S. will be helpful, Sen. McConnell simply ignores that fact that a large part of our population suffers from opioid dependence that will not magically disappear.
For decades, pharmaceutical companies manufactured low-dose oxycodone (introduced in 1939) and fentanyl (1968) and marketed these products responsibly in the United States, bringing much-needed pain relief to those suffering from cancer and other chronic diseases. Doctors have always recognized the risk of patient dependence with these drugs, but generally maintained their appropriate use in society.
Then something changed in the 1990s. Novel formulations of oxycodone, fentanyl, and related opioids started to be marketed aggressively by a few greedy drug companies. Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma, controlled by the Sackler family, launched OxyContin in 1996, and the race was on to maximize profits by getting our nation hooked on opioids.
California-based Allergan, Missouri-based Mallinckrodt, and Pennsylvania-based manufacturers Endo, Mylan, and Cephalon, among other American companies, pursued illegal and unethical marketing tactics to push their pills. By 2015, one in seven American physicians had received gifts from opioid manufacturers. Doctors had written seven opioid prescriptions for every 10 Americans that year. It is no wonder that overdose deaths increased 2-3 times from 1999 to 2015.
Even worse than the rise in overdoses, the U.S. opioid manufacturers had created a population of Americans dependent on them. Around 2015, federal and state regulators clamped down on the illicit activities of these opioid companies. Unfortunately, they failed to couple this with a nationwide strategy to deal with the people who were now hooked on opioids. Many Americans quickly turned to the black market to find cheap and unregulated synthetics, often manufactured overseas and smuggled by cartels into the U.S. Since 2015, overdose rates have only skyrocketed further.
To turn the tide and begin solving the opioid crisis, we need to invest not just in law enforcement but also tremendous institutions in Kentucky such as the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky, SUN Behavioral Health, and Addiction Recovery Care. They are dedicated professionals on the front line of our opioid crisis working with limited resources.
Addiction is not prevented or overcome simply by chasing the suppliers. We know that better mental and physical healthcare and addiction treatment services are needed. It’s just common sense which far too many of us have gained through watching loved ones suffer through and sometimes die from addiction.
We need to listen to the healthcare professionals who know how to beat the opioid crisis. The American Medical Association identified six steps, that Congress should support, to solve the opioid crisis:
• Increase access to treatment for patients
• Enforce parity laws to ensure mental health and substance abuse treatment is adequately paid for, as compared to other health services
• Ensure access to psychiatric services and other trained medical care
• Improve access to multidisciplinary pain treatment
• Expand harm reduction efforts (e.g. Naloxone) to reduce death and disease
• Improve monitoring and patient follow-up for months and years
With more than 20 years of experience in medical research, I understand the deficiencies in our healthcare system, the loopholes that allowed the opioid crisis to take root in the first place, and how to responsibly treat pain. In fact, my most recent company Koligo Therapeutics was spun out of the University of Louisville to help patients treat chronic pancreatitis surgically, without the need for opioids.
I call on Senator McConnell and his colleagues in Congress to address our crisis with a comprehensive plan that actually works instead of scoring political points.
Matt Lehman, a Newport resident, is a candidate for Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District seat. He is an entrepreneur and is raising three children with his wife, Adriana.