Opioid deaths rise as corporations are held responsible.

As opioid overdose rates rise past 100,000, it proves a struggle to identify those responsible.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - The opioid crisis is getting worse, with national overdoses skyrocketing past 100,000 deaths per year in the last few years, according to Dr. Jeffrey Fudin, a clinical pharmacy specialist in pain management.

“The pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction. People got in trouble for prescribing, so now there’s opioid phobia. We have patients suffering in pain, and the risk of suicide is going up as a result,” says Fudin.

But prescription drugs aren’t the only problem, as illegal drugs have entered the black market, causing a significant uptick in deaths due to drug abuse, according to Fudin. “Patients are getting drugs laced with illicit fentanyl, which is a thousand times more potent than pharmaceutical fentanyl,” he explains.

According to Daniel R. Benson, Assemblyman of New Jersey’s 14th Legislative District, recent deaths to drug use have only gotten worse. “With COVID being hit, we’ve seen the rise of depression and other mental illnesses. We’ve seen an equal amount of overdoses and drug uses as well. And we’re trying to look at more strategies to combat that,” says Benson.

Fudin explains that there are cases where the doctors have done everything right, and in other cases, they put the patients in harm’s way. “I’ve seen doctors do crazy things, like exchanging sexual favors with a drug rep in order to prescribe opioids that they’re selling,” he says.

In the ’90s and early 2000s, drug companies over-marketed opioids, and many people later sued those companies for millions of dollars, resulting in them suffering huge losses, according to Fudin. In 2016, the CDC put forward guidelines on how to prescribe opioids. But Fudin says that their evidence was poorly based, leading many experts to call for better guidelines. Moreover, Fudin says he believes that patients are suffering as a result of the way the CDC reports their data, as they equate overdose deaths by illegal and prescription drugs.

But Fudin says there’s a complicated relationship between the CDC, drug companies, and insurance companies. “The drug companies, I feel, have been extremely responsible. I feel that somebody who has not been held accountable, that is more responsible than anybody, are the third-party health insurance providers. This is because there are other alternatives that are more expensive and safer, and they don’t want to pay for them,” he explains.

​According to Fudin, insurance companies get a share of the profit from the sales of drugs manufactured by drug companies. He says that while some drug companies have tried to make it harder to abuse opioids, insurance companies have refused to fund safer (and less expensive) drugs, which has forced some of these drug companies out of business.

“I think the issue with insurance companies is that they’re not covering treatment services, or at least not enough,” says Benson.

However, Benson says the government is taking steps to mitigate the effects of the opioid crisis. “There's a myth out there that you have to hit rock bottom and lose everything before you can start getting recovery,” he says. “That’s not true: the sooner you can get people into treatment, the higher success rate you have for stopping addiction and breaking that chain without losing your family, kids, and job.”

Benson explains that the local government has been taking steps to eliminate the stigma around mental health in order to encourage people to address their health, rather than turning to drugs. “We’re getting large settlements with opioid manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies,” he says. “My goal is to make sure that the money goes into a revolving fund to pay for more mental health and addiction treatment services in New Jersey at the local level.”

Making treatment available to those who need it could be a crucial step towards addressing the opioid crisis, according to Benson. “Mental pain is no less than real pain, which is part of the stigma we’re trying to address,” he says.