Well-intentioned but ultimately misguided actions over recent decades have contributed to today’s opioid epidemic. Pain was promoted as the “fifth vital sign” pharmaceutical manufacturers encouraged more liberal prescriptions of new and supposedly safer formulations. When addiction issues became apparent, pendulum swung toward restricting prescriptions, constraining “street” supply opioids. The...

BACKGROUND Therapeutic use and abuse of prescription opioids in the United States increased substantially between 1990 and 2010. The Centers for Disease Control estimated deaths related to pharmaceutical opioids reached nearly 19,000 in 2014. Of prescription opioids sold, 10% are extended release (ER) and 90% immediate release (IR). However, most regulations and interventions have focused on de...

One of the core objectives of supply-side drug law enforcement is to reduce drug use by raising the cost of buying drugs. The effectiveness of this strategy depends on how illicit drug users respond to the rise in costs. The aim of the current study was to estimate how methamphetamine users would respond to changes in the prices of methamphetamine and heroin, using hypothetical drug purchasing ...

Identifying the role of opioids in the mediation of learned sexual behaviors has been complicated by the use of differing methodologies in the investigations. In this review addressing multiple species, techniques, and pharmaceutical manipulations, several features of opioid mediation become apparent. Opioids are differentially involved in conditioned and unconditioned sexual behaviors. The tim...

BACKGROUND There is increasing debate about cannabis use for medical purposes, including for symptomatic treatment of chronic pain. We investigated patterns and correlates of cannabis use in a large community sample of people who had been prescribed opioids for chronic non-cancer pain. METHODS The POINT study included 1514 people in Australia who had been prescribed pharmaceutical opioids for...

Recent experience has prompted the US FDA to consider whether ethanol ingestion may modify the release characteristics of prolonged-release formulations, where dose dumping may be an issue for patient safety. The influence of ethanol on the in vitro release of opioid drugs from some prolonged-release formulations utilizing different release technologies was examined. Results indicated that the ...