"Oxycontin was misclassified due to fraudulent reportings of the drug's capabilities and marketing campaign. However that should have never affected people getting legit pain care, but it definitely did."
What does legit pain care look like? Does it include the prescription of narcotics to outpatients on an ongoing basis, or for more than a couple days? While the safety of oxycontin was misrepresented, I assume there are still some problems with how other narcotics are administered to outpatients.
Perhaps that was the dosing or your siblings biology. Hydrocodone is also a narcotic that is potentially habit forming. The addictive potential of oxycodone is supposed to be very similar or only slightly higher than that of hydrocodone.
I'd say it probably is/would have been very difficult to stop, but the dose was low and consistent. My fear is people like that who get cut off, then resort to illegal drugs.
I realize this begs the question of is "chronic pain" basically just an addiction? I'm not qualified to answer that though.
Ideally they shouldn't be cut off. I would think we should look into a different prescription and payment paradigm where the meds required for weaning them off (based on the protocols for how long they were on them and what dose) should be part of the initial prescription. That way if you lose coverage or something you can't just be cold turkey.
I also wonder how many people, including physicians, really understand the transition required. I had an elderly friend who went on some sort of narcotic after a surgery. They were told after the fact that since they were on it for a month, it would take them a year to wean them off. I don't have the dosing or med name, but that seemed insane to me. It was ultimately a contributing factor in their death due to some side effects and other complications.
What I'm saying is, if it wasn't oxy, it would have been vicodin or some other narcotic. The problem is how they are prescribed and the social environment. Sure oxy misrepresented safety which lead to some increase in outpatient prescription, but this is still a major source of the problem. Oxy is just the scapegoat for much larger systemic issue since they got caught misrepresenting safety. Nobody has any actual solution to this problem so far.
What does legit pain care look like? Does it include the prescription of narcotics to outpatients on an ongoing basis, or for more than a couple days? While the safety of oxycontin was misrepresented, I assume there are still some problems with how other narcotics are administered to outpatients.