By Josh Bloom — December 12, 2018
No Explanation Needed.

If Shakespeare were alive today he would be hard-pressed to come up with a script that could match the tragedy that has been imposed on this country by self-appointed drug experts, bureaucrats, self-serving politicians, and various other fools. It's that bad. And it was largely preventable.

So, let's all congratulate the CDC for sticking its nose where it should not have been and the Physicians Responsible for Opioid Prohibition (1) for creating a mess that we will not be getting out of anytime soon.

A new report from in the December 12th National Vital Statistics Reports (NVSR) confirms what patient pain advocates and I have been saying all along - that we've been fighting the wrong war (against prescription opioid analgesics) and, in doing so, managed to screw two things up at the same time.

Pain patients are suffering

More people, not fewer, are dying

One can only hope that the press, which has been pathetically inept in its coverage of the "opioid crisis," which is really the "fentanyl crisis," might pay attention to the new report and possibly start to get the story right. But don't get your hopes up. To do so would entail not only reading the report but also, understanding what it says.

I'll make it easy for them.

As I've written repeatedly, pills are not the real problem (See No, Vicodin Is Not The Real Killer In The Opioid Crisis and The Opioid Epidemic In 6 Charts Designed To Deceive You); it is the difficulty of obtaining them that is now. The NVSR makes this painfully obvious. Here's why.

In 2011 (Table 1), there were 41,340 overdose deaths from all drugs - legal, illegal, prescription, and over the counter. Oxycodone was the primary cause of OD deaths (5,587, 13.5% of total). But a closer look at Table 1 reveals some interesting facts.

SNIP