Jan 22, 2019 – Statesman.Com — State health officials on Tuesday unveiled a new website they hope will help educate people about prescription opioid misuse and encourage patients to safely dispose of their unused medications so they don’t end up in the wrong hands, the latest in an effort by the state attorney general’s office to combat Texas’ growing opioid crisis.
The website, “Dose of Reality,” is available in English and Spanish at doseofreality.texas.gov. It includes free education materials on how to prevent opioid abuse, how to safely store medication and how to respond to an opioid overdose, as well as an interactive map that shows dozens of locations where people can bring in their unused prescription medication to be discarded, including drug stores and law enforcement offices.
The site’s features follow a format first used in Wisconsin to share information about the opioid crisis and has also been duplicated by other states. Health officials — including from the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which teamed up on the initiative — say the cost to maintain the website is minimal. They have not directed any funding toward marketing and are relying on word of mouth to let people know about it.
In 2016, more than 42,000 people died from opioid overdoses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including 1,375 in Texas.
“One of the main drivers of the crisis has been deceptive marketing and promotion by pharmaceutical companies,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday.
Last year, Paxton’s office sued national drug manufacturer Purdue Pharma for what it said were deceptive marketing practices that misrepresented the risk of addiction associated with its opioid medications.
“That effort is ongoing, and my office continues to serve in a leadership role in investigating others responsible for creating the public health crisis we now face,” Paxton said. “Pursuing justice for the responsible parties in the pharmaceutical industry is essential, but it is not enough because the damage done by industry through misinformation campaigns.”
Paxton said the website is an attempt to correct that problem, by providing accurate information that is easily accessible.
“It’s a truthful counterweight to the false narrative that has won the day for way too long,” he said. Although opioid medications are still being misused, doctors have been prescribing fewer of them in recent years.
Texas is among the states with the lowest opioid prescribing rates in the nation, with 53.1 prescriptions written in 2017 per 100 people, according to the CDC. That number fell significantly in the last decade, from 71.2 prescriptions written per 100 people in 2007, records show.
In Austin, opioid prescribing rates — already lower than the state and national averages — also are dropping. In 2012, 69.9 prescriptions were written per 100 people. By 2016, that number had dropped to 51.2, according to the city’s director of public health, Philip Huang. “Our physicians and our community is doing better than some places,” Huang said last year.
Still, numerous law enforcement officers, health professionals and criminal justice experts testified to the Texas House Select Committee on Opioids and Substance Use over the summer about the problems they are seeing with opioids, including prescription painkillers, and other drugs. In some Texas counties, there are more opioid prescriptions per year than people, Paxton said.
The committee in its final report made several recommendations, including efforts to expand drug take-back programs, which several people testified had been successful in cutting down the number of medications that are diverted for illegal use. It also recommended improvements to data collection that would better show the extent of the opioid problem in Texas, as well as expanding medication-assisted treatment programs, which experts have said are vastly lacking in the state.
Health officials said Tuesday they are continuing to explore ways to combat the problem from every angle.
“This is an issue that the governor and the Legislature are focused on, as are other state agencies, local governments and private organizations across Texas,” Department of State Health Services Commissioner John Hellerstedt said. “Opioid misuse and addiction are complex problems, and no single agency or group can tackle the problem alone. Success will come about as a result of committed partners.”
