Reduce Access to Prescription Drugs

Return to Opioid Top-Level Strategy Map or the Zoom Map - Reduce Access to Opioids

Stats on Access to Opioids for Non-Medical Use (Misuse)

Pain medications are often given or sold by friends or relatives to people who misuse them.  

This article on the results of SAMHSA's 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the NSDUH, (a survey of nearly 70,000 people) shows some important statistics on Opioid Misuse. 

 

According to the survey (which always is influenced by the sample surveyed and their honesty in answering the survey) indicates that of people who misused pain relievers, the majority (53.1%) responded that they received them from a friend or relative.  

• 38.5% received them from a friend or relative for free.
• 10.6% purchased them from a friend or relative
• 4.0% took them from a friend or strange

It would be helpful to have (or find) better research on this, but given that this poll showed that 62.6% of the people who misused prescription pain relievers claimed to have done so for pain, it would seem plausible that the person giving them their own prescription pain relievers were trying to help them deal with the pain, not trying to help them get high or feed an addiction to aviod withdrawal symptoms. 

This data would suggest to important strategy issues:

1. It is not enough to lock up pain medications to avoid diversion.  If people are givng them to friends or relatives or if they are selling them, that person would not be stopped by a typical locked box.  They already know how to open that. 
2. A strategy to reduce prescription drug misuse should include a strong emphasis on educating people to not give or sell their medications to anyone else.  This might include educating people on how they can best respond when a friend or relative approaches them to get prescription pain medication to help them address their pain problem. 
3. A strategy should emphasize prompt disposal of pain medications after their prescribed use is no longer needed. If people quickly dispose of their presecription pain medications when they are not necessary, they would be less likely in a situation where a friend or relative who was struggling with pain (or perhaps pretending to struggle with pain or who was struggling with paid related to withdrawal) would be able to pursuade the person to give them or sell them the drugs. 
4. People who might be approached by friends and relatives who are seeking access to pain medications (the #1 source based on the NSDUH) should become important actors in a strategy that emphasizes helping people before their brains have been changed due to ongoing use or misuse of opioids.   A good strategy would equip these people with ways to help their friends and relatives with both physical pain and with ways to get help for other factors that may be driving misuse of opioids. 

It is Getting Harder for Teens to Access Prescription Opioids

The 2017 Monitoring the Future survey of 8th, 10th and 12th graders shows encouraging news.  it's getting harder for teens to access prescription opioids.  Only 35.8 percent of 12th graders said they were easily available in the 2017 survey, compared to more than 54 percent in 2010   Overall, 43,703 students from 360 public and private schools participated in this year's MTF survey. 

How Easy Access Leads to Misuse and Addiction

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Examples of Easy Access to Opioids

Skittles Parties:  A Skittles Party could take the form of a home filled with teenagers where everyone brings all the prescription medications they have on hand and pool them. Then anyone at the party who wants to abuse a pill just dips in and grabs whatever they want.
 

Tools and Resources  (Delete this sections and the page linked below)

TR - Reduce Access to Opioids

Scorecard Building

Potential Objective Details
Potential Measures and Data Sources

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Potential Actions and Partners

Resources to Investigate

More RTI on Reducing Access to Opioids

Research Topics

The following are research topics that would enhance coalition efforts to reduce access of opioids for non-medical use. 

1. It would be great to have or find research that clarifies details on why people give opioids to friends and relatives.  If this is the single largest source of how people the presecription pain medication for misuse, having greater insights into this would allow for better strategies and tools.   This research could involve surveys and focus group discussions. 
2. It would be helpful for a someone to try and find as many campaigns, materials and tactics for helping people understand the negative consequences of giving (or selling) their prescription drugs to other people who may be misusing them and/or developing an addiction.  When examples are found, the researcher could strive to find out any information on the audience the materials were focused on, how they were used, and what ideas the creators of the materials might have for others to use them.  The researcher could also try to get permission for the materials to be shared and used by others (uploading them to this site) and gather any information the effectiveness of the materials. 
3. It would be very helpful to have a series of measurement tools for determining the degree to which different types of drugs can be accessed by people who were not prescribed those drugs (or who are seeking to access illegal drugs).  It would be ideal if a set of measures and data gathering techniques could be refined over time and then broadly shared.  If a lot of coalitions were using the same meaures and data gathering techniques, the data could be shared for valuable analysis and benchmarking. 

 

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Sources

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1. http://www.narconon.org/blog/narconon/skittles-party-by-teens-is-not-what-it-seems/