There were 240 million opioid prescriptions in the U.S. in 2016, a number that accounts for about 30 percent of the world’s opioid prescriptions, and is enough for one opioid prescription for every adult American.
Experts believe the overprescribing of opioids is at least somewhat responsible for the current opioid crisis. This led to a national discussion around prescribing stewardship, as well as the development of policy and regulation with regard to opioid prescribing. Included among this have been limits on the duration of therapy, partial fills, and requirements that providers access their state’s prescription monitoring program before prescribing. These policies have had some success and there has been a decline in the number of opioid prescriptions in the last several years.
This should be good news, but unfortunately, opioids aren’t the only thing filling America’s medicine cabinets. Looking again at 2016, there were more than 190,000 kilos of amphetamines, drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, produced for consumption in the United States. The estimates are that about 16 million adults and more than 3.5 million children are taking these stimulants.