Opinion: Doctors ‘overprescribing’ opioids isn’t the cause of the overdose epidemic — and it never was
A key part of the federal government’s narrative about the epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths in the U.S. has been that it is driven by doctors and other clinicians overprescribing opioid painkillers. That story line is false — and was never true.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has traditionally relied on death certificate data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics for its data on overdose deaths, organized as Underlying Cause of Death data using codes from the International Classification of Diseases.
