Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for the Cato Institute, Jeffrey A Singer explains that after bringing abuse-deterrent formulations to market, there was a noticeable 222 percent increase in hepatitis C infections.

· What are some other unintended consequences of abuse-deterrent opioids? What else is being done to address the opioid crisis?

· Here's more on the opioid crisis and solutions to opioid abuse. 

One year ago Cato published my policy analysis, “Abuse-Deterrent Opioids and the Law of Unintended Consequences,” which provided strong evidence that reformulating opioids, so that they could not be crushed for snorting or dissolved for injecting by nonmedical users, only served to drive nonmedical users to more dangerous, readily available, and cheaper heroin provided by the efficient black market.

The evidence included a RAND study that found “a substantial share of the dramatic increase in heroin deaths since 2010 can be attributed to the reformulation of OxyContin” which replaced regular OxyContin in 2010. It also included a study from researchers at Notre Dame and Boston Universities that found:

Read the full article about the unintended consequences of abuse-deterrent opioids by Jeffrey A Singer at the Cato Institute.