Back in March, Oklahoma announced that it would become the first state to expand Medicaid coverage to include opioid addiction treatment. Although vaccinations are now promising to bring an end to the COVID-19 crisis, opioid overdoses have increased during the pandemic. According to new data from the CDC opioid overdose related deaths grew by over 30% across the country in 2020.
In an effort to address these rising overdose rates, states like Oklahoma are looking for pharmaceutical opioid producers to pay for the damages of the crisis and fund addiction programs. But growing evidence suggests that government policies themselves are also to blame for the growing death toll.
Here in Oklahoma, Johnson & Johnson is fighting the state in a lawsuit worth billions for its alleged role in the opioid crisis. Last year, while the company was developing a vaccine to help put an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was also defending their opioid-manufacturing subsidiaries.
Yet, studies increasingly show that the ultimate effect of the government interventions, like prescription drug monitoring programs, over the last decade has been a massive increase in drug overdoses. New research published by the American Medical Association concludes that state interventions to reduce prescribing did reduce deaths from prescription opioids — but at the high cost of increasing deaths from illicit drugs like heroin and fentanyl.
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