Opioid Abuse and Overdose Crisis: New Treatment Available—Controversy Continues Between Harm-Reduction Treatment and Abstinence Treatment

[摘要] The current opioid abuse and overdose crisis has been a public health concern in the last decade, and is possibly reaching epidemic proportions based on recent trends. According to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report, in 2002, there were 166,000 past-month heroin users 12 years of age or older in the United States, and this number increased 50 percent by 2012 with 335,000 users. The rate of overdose deaths related to opioid analgesic pills in the United States quadrupled between 1999 and 2009, according to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention Report.1 The data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) conducted between 2002 and 2011 showed that the heroin incidence rate was 19 times higher among those who reported prior nonmedical opioid analgesic use than among those who did not (0.39% versus 0.02%).1

[学科分类] 精神健康和精神病学