Philip Seymour Hoffman’s tragic death from an overdose involving opioids, cocaine and prescription drugs last month dominated the headlines before receding from view. Since then, an estimated 5,000 more people have died
from an overdose in America – people whose early deaths are generally not reported on.

Drug overdose deaths have become a public health crisis killing an average of 100 Americans a day – a doubling over the past decade. Overdose deaths are
now the leading cause of accidental death in the US, killing more people than traffic accidents, suicides or gun homicides. As the chart below indicates, this trend has been driven largely by overdoses involving prescription pain medication. In the past decade, these opioid analgesics, also known as painkillers, have killed more than 100,000 Americans.

It is all too easy for such large numbers to become abstractions and to leave
one numb. While their stories often don’t make the news, behind every death
is a life cut short and a community of bereft family and friends.

Opioids are both highly addictive recreational drugs and vital medicines.
Chronic pain sufferers and some physicians are wary of measures that would make it difficult for people to get relief from debilitating pain. They point out
that many derive great benefit from these drugs and do not become addicted. 

At the same time, some medical experts, believe these powerful drugs have become over-prescribed - leaving America awash in pharmaceutical grade heroin. Pills containing the opioid hydrocodone, such as Vicodin, are the most prescribed drug in america. All told, prescriptions for opioid analgesics have quadrupled over the past decade. In 2010, the amount of these painkillers prescribed in the United States was enough to medicate every American adult around the clock for a month, according to the CDC. Increased prescribing of these drugs and deaths involving their use have grown in tandem.

The debate over how to balance the needs of patients in pain, while reversing widespread addiction and death from these same drugs is fraught and
involves conflicting public health concerns. America is gradually waking up
from the excesses of a decades-long drug war which has revealed both the
futility and great harm that comes from punishing certain types of drug use.
In that respect, the increasing availability of drug treatment under the
Affordable Care Act, the distribution of overdose-reversing drugs like
Naloxone, and the adoption of Good Samaritan laws by a number of states - which allow people to call an ambulance without fear of prosecution to help
save someone who is overdosing - are all welcome developments.

But there are other important and still unresolved questions - what types of
pain should opioids be prescribed for? Should healthcare professionals who prescribe, dispense and administer opioids be required to receive special training? Who should design the curriculum? Are the ever increasing
amounts of opioids being prescribed and sold in the US commensurate with
what is needed medically?

The debate over these critical questions is not taking place in a vacuum.
America has become a heavily medicated society, where people are barraged
with ads for legal drugs. This fuels billions in profits for pharmaceutical companies who then shower politicians with more money than any other
lobby in America - over $225 million last year alone.

As with the financial industry, federal regulators allowed opioid
manufacturers to make unverified claims about the safety of their
products that turned out to be false. This paved the way for a huge
increase in the prescribing of these drugs, which has lead to the crisis
America is now in the grips of.

The question of how to regulate opioids is a critical one that is under-reported. It’s a topic I’ve written about and will continue to explore in future articles.
But it’s not what I’m writing about today.

There is a place for bearing witness to the lives of those who have fallen
victim to an epidemic that could have been prevented. Most of its victims
are not famous and are never written about. 

Over the next several weeks, I will be featuring the stories of people who have struggled with opioid addiction and others who have lost sons, brothers, husbands, and mothers who became addicted and died from these drugs.

In the process I hope their voices will bring a human face to the sobering numbers. I also aim to shed some light on the features of the crisis, including
the need for some doctors and patients to be better educated about this class
of drugs, how for many people the path to addiction and death begins with a prescription for an injury, and how some are turning from prescription
opioids to heroin, which is pharmacologically equivalent but is often cheaper. This has contributed to an 80% increase in the number of past-year-users of heroin since 2007.