Massachusetts Study Confirms That People Rarely Die After Using Opioids Prescribed for Them – Reason.com

Massachusetts Study Confirms That People Rarely Die After Using Opioids Prescribed for Them – Reason.com

• Illicit fentanyl and heroin accounted for the vast majority of opioid-related deaths, while only 1 percent of cases involved drugs for which people had prescriptions.

"Although prescription pain medication is commonly blamed for the "opioid epidemic," such drugs play a small and shrinking role in deaths involving this category of psychoactive substances. 
A recent study of opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts underlines this crucial point, finding that prescription analgesics were detected without heroin or fentanyl in less than 17 percent of the cases. 
Furthermore, decedents had prescriptions for the opioids that showed up in toxicology tests just 1.3 percent of the time..."
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