Americans hooked on painkillers turn to heroin. Doctors say they should be using marijuana instead

Many Americans who got addicted to painkillers such as OxyContin or Vicodin are now using heroin, after the Center for Disease Control increased regulations concerning the sale of opioid painkillers.

Trying to stop the growing problem of opioid painkiller addiction, regulators pressured physicians to minimise the strength and dosage of the painkillers they prescribe to patients. It also became much harder to get a prescription for drugs such as OxyContin.

Also, the pills themselves were made harder to take. Vicodin or OxyContin need to be crushed into a powder so they can be snorted or injected in a dissolved solution.

To prevent the abuse of painkillers, pharmaceutical drug companies have begun making the pills harder to crush.

But the ”war on painkillers” had an unexpected effect, Theodore Cicero, a psychiatry professor at Washington University in St. Louis said.

People who got hooked on painkillers are now using heroin to treat chronic pain.

”Absolutely, much of the heroin use you’re seeing now is due in large part to making prescription opioids a lot less acceptable,”, Cicero said.

A recent study found that 86 percent of heroin users used prescription opioid drugs before they started to use heroin.

Strangely, heroin is cheaper and easier to get. One pill of OxyContin or Vicodin can cost from $60 to $100 per pill, while a single dose of heroin usually costs around $10.

Also, monitoring programs which keep track of how many painkiller prescriptions doctors write make the drug very hard to find, whereas heroin can easily be found in any city or suburb.

From heroin to marijuana

Kevin Boehnke, a professor at the University of Michigan says that while painkillers are harder to get, patients are still in chronic pain and willing to try even illegal drugs to numb the pain.

Boehnke coordinated a study that came up whit another counter-intuitive solution. One way to prevent patients from going from painkillers to heroin is to treat them with marijuana.

The study found that patients treating chronic pain with marijuana reduced their reliance on prescription pain medication by 64 percent. Another study found that doctors in states with legalised medical marijuana prescribe an average of 1,826 fewer doses of prescription painkillers annually.

”We’re in the midst of an opioid epidemic, and we need to figure out what to do about it. I’m hoping our research continues a conversation of cannabis as a potential alternative for opioids,” Boehnke said.

The professor said that while 23 percent of people who use heroin become addicted, the same is true for just 9 percent of marijuana users.

Also, a heroin overdose is quite common, while the quantity of THC needed for a marijuana overdose is much greater the amount even a heavy user could use in a day.