As rates of nonmedical use of prescription opioids continues to soar in the United States, more than doubling among adults from 2001-2002 to 2012-2013.

“The increasing misuse of prescription opioid pain relievers poses a myriad of serious public health consequences,” said Nora D. Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which contributed funding for the study. “These include increases in opioid use disorders and related fatalities from overdoses, as well as the rising incidence of newborns who experience neonatal abstinence syndrome. In some instances, prescription opioid misuse can progress to intravenous heroin use with consequent increases in risk for HIV, hepatitis C and other infections among individuals sharing needles.”

Statistics provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) include;

• Ten million Americans (4.1 percent of the adult population) used opioid medications in 2012-2013 without a prescription or not as prescribed (in greater amounts), up from 1.8 percent in 2001-2002.
• Eleven percent of Americans report nonmedical use of prescription opioids at some point in their lives, increasing from 4.7 percent ten years prior.
• More than two million adults (0.9 percent of the adult population) reported symptoms of nonmedical prescription opioid use disorder (NMPOUD), according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).  
• Drug poisoning deaths involving opioid analgesics, both prescription and illect, quadrupled between 1999 and 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Emergency department visits increased by 153 percent from 2004 to 2011, based on data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Drug Abuse Warning Network.
• People who develop alcohol use disorder at some point in their lives are nearly twice as likely to also develop opioid use disorder, based on NESARC-III data.
• Only about 5 percent of people misusing prescription opioids in the past year and 17 percent of those with prescription opioid use disorder receive treatment, based on NESARC-III data.

“The national data from NESARC-III substantially advances what we know about prevalence, co-occurring disorders and treatment rates,” said senior author Bridget Grant, PhD, chief of the NIAAA Laboratory of Epidemiology and Biometry. “Prior to this analysis, there was a lack of current epidemiologic data on nonmedical prescription opioid use and prescription opioid use disorder using DSM-5 criteria.”

Overall, the nonmedical prescription opioid use by U.S. adults has increased by 161 percent from 2001-2002 to 2012-2013 while prescription opioid use disorder has increased by 125 percent.