Pioneering Solutions

Staggering statistics include:

• Each year 160k Americans may develop addiction to opioid medications during standard pain management (Pino & Covington, 2019).
• The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reported overdose deaths from opioids rising from approximately 51K in 2019 to almost 70K in 2020 (more than deaths caused by guns, car accidents or breast cancer).
• The Council of Economic Advisers estimated in November of 2017 that the economic cost of the opioid crisis to the U.S. economy was $504.0 billion in 2015, or 2.8% of GDP that year.

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse:

• Roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them.
• Between 8 and 12 percent of people using an opioid for chronic pain develop an opioid use disorder.
• An estimated 4 to 6 percent who misuse prescription opioids transition to heroin.
• About 80 percent of people who use heroin first misused prescription opioids.

In reality, opioid therapies are commonly ineffective in managing chronic pain, often exacerbate pain symptoms and produce a rapid tolerance that requires regular dosage increases. Yet, they remain in high demand with Opioid and NSAID/COX2 therapies accounting for 52% of the pain management market—a $62 billion global market, with $30 billion spent in the United States.