By Roger Chriss, Columnist

A recent Politico column by three anti-opioid activists asserts that “opioid use disorder is common in chronic pain patients” and that the nation’s overdose crisis “stems largely from the overprescribing of opioids.”

Andrew Kolodny, MD, Jane Ballantyne, MD, and Gary Franklin, MD -- who are the founder, president, and vice-president, respectively, of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP) – also wrote that “many individuals become addicted to prescription opioids through medical or non-medical use, and then switch to heroin after becoming addicted."



This claim is an oversimplification of the tragedy that is heroin addiction. It both ignores the complex trajectory of drug use that culminates in heroin and omits the known risk factors of the people who suffer from heroin addiction. It also runs counter to the known data about various forms of opioid addiction, which clearly shows that most people on opioid therapy do not develop problems with misuse, abuse or addiction, and rarely move on to heroin.



The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimates that about 10 percent of patients prescribed opioids develop an opioid use disorder. And only about 5 percent of those who misuse their medication ever make the transition to heroin.