The United States has the ignominious distinction of leading the world in opioid prescribing,1 and in opioid-related overdose deaths. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that over 40,000 people died of an opioid-related overdose, with fentanyl-related deaths exceeding those of heroin or prescription opioids.2 Opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of unintentional deaths in the US and of declining lifespan expectancies.3 With a worsening crisis, agencies of the US government and others produced an array of reports on the opioid crisis. Yet the death rate escalated further from 2010 to the present.
© 2018 American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.