By Josh Bloom — November 5, 2018

"Controlled Prescription Drugs (CPDs) ... are still responsible for the most drug-involved overdose deaths and are the second most commonly abused substance in the United States."

2018 National Drug Threat Assessment. Drug Enforcement Administration, October 2018.

I just don't get it. A newly-released 164-page report just issued by the DEA maintains that controlled prescription drugs are killing more Americans than any other type of drug (1); even more than heroin and fentanyl. But if you've been keeping up in this area this sounds very strange. Can it really be true that drugs like Vicodin and Percocet are killing more Americans, especially when one report after another lays the blame on illicit fentanyl and its scary analogs? What is going on? Are we seeing more of lying by omission or the use of intentionally misleading statistics, such as we've seen from the CDC and its advisors (See: The Opioid Epidemic In 6 Charts Designed To Deceive You)? Is this claim legitimate?

While the quote at the beginning seems clear enough, it is either intentionally deceiving, or unintentionally confusing. Here's why.

First, given the non-stop barrage of opioid crisis stories, most of which have been dead wrong, many people will automatically assume that "controlled prescription drugs" refers to prescription opioids. It does not. Other classes of drugs are also controlled and they are lumped together with opioids:

"Controlled prescription drugs (CPDs) includes, but is not limited to narcotics (e.g. Vicodin, OxyContin), depressants (e.g. Valium, Xanax), stimulants (e.g. Adderall, Ritalin), and anabolic steroids (e.g. Anadrol, Oxandrin)."

Indeed, if you look carefully enough there is a separate definition for opioid analgesic drugs:

"Opioid analgesic overdose deaths include deaths from natural and semi-synthetics: codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone."

This means that:

SNIP