Top health official proposes regulations to fight opioid abuse

The Arizona Department of Health Services director proposes to limit the number of pills containing opioids that physicians can prescribe to patients, to make it illegal to issue paper prescriptions for opiates and for doctors to give patients the drugs directly.

Dr Cara Christ also wants bottles containing opioids to have a red cap, reinforcing to patients that the contents are not just a typical drug.

She said that the measures were necessary to fight the rising death rate from opioid overdoses from both legal and illegal use. Dr Christ said she thinks a broad-based approach is required because opioid abuse has reached epidemic proportions.

In 2016, 790 people died from opioid overdoses in Arizona, an increase from 638 in 2015. The deaths include 652 people who died from misusing prescriptions and 308 who died from heroin overdoses. Dr Christ’s goal is to reduce the number of overdose deaths to 592 by 2020.

One major regulatory change Dr Christ proposes is to limit opioid prescriptions for people she calls ‘opioid naïve’ – individuals who have not used opioids during the past three to six months – to a maximum five-day supply of pills. She believes that this approach will help reduce the risk of opioid addiction.

Dr Christ’s proposal is based on research conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which showed that the risk of long-term opioid abuse increased significantly after the fifth day of taking the drug.