Columbia: Balancing a country’s need to make prescription drugs available to those
in need while simultaneously curbing nonmedical use is one of our
greatest challenges, according to a perspective article just published
by Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a colleague at American University of Beirut. The article published in
World Psychiatry,
the journal of the World Psychiatric Association, cites research
finding increased rates of deaths worldwide from prescription opioids as
high as 550 percent depending on country and time-period. For example,
from 2000 to 2014, there was a 200 percent increase in overdose deaths
due to opioid use.
