An article about the opioid crisis and the rising number of people who are dying from overdoses interviews
Richard D. Blondell, MD, professor of
family medicine and vice chair of
addiction medicine, who said the opioid crisis is an epidemic of our own making and that prescription rates have skyrocketed, fueled in part by hospitals and doctors trying to treat chronic pain rather than the underlying symptoms. “Long-term, it’s going to be 20 years before we dig ourselves out of the hole that we made,” he said. “Some aspects of [the crisis] are getting worse.”
