Israel is now leading the world in one very negative way. According to a study from the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, the country now comes first in the world in the per capita consumption of opioids.
According to the study, in 2020, Israel was ranked number one in the world in opioid consumption — pain narcotics, among them fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than heroin — and has overtaken the United States.
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Everyone knows all about the problems with opioid addiction in America. People across the country, innocent of the possibility of addiction, were prescribed narcotic painkillers for all manner of medical conditions such as back problems. And people who were hospitalized for operations or who were in accidents and needed treatment were given short term prescriptions for their pain. But when the actual pain went away, the patients felt the pains of withdrawal and assumed they were still in need of the painkillers they had been taking, not understanding that they had become addicts.
The most famous example of this was the narcotic OxyContin that was made by Purdue Pharma, which was owned by the Sackler Family. Purdue went bankrupt and was forced to pay out billions after reaching a settlement with the federal government which had accused the company of being nothing more than drug pushers.
It was around that time, the research shows, Israel passed the United States in per capita use of opioids.
So, is the same thing now happening in Israel?
The researchers considered immediate actions that should be taken to reduce consumption and over-subscription, including safer alternatives for managing pain, improved accessibility for medical treatment, mental health and social services, and reducing the stigma connected to the use and abuse of drugs.
Taub Center researchers recommend learning about other countries that have witnessed the worst opioid crises, like the United States and Canada, and adopting the best practices developed and implemented successfully by them. They recommend establishing safe protocols for prescriptions, the immediate reduction in the share of non-justified prescriptions for fentanyl, expanding treatment and checks for abuse, as well as inter-organization cooperation and increased accessibility to social assistance.
Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, one of the authors of the research, says there is a need to formulate a national strategic plan that includes the steps as outlined in this paper, alongside consciousness-raising in the public regarding the use of medications and addiction and the encouragement for the use of non-addictive alternatives. Only in this way can we succeed in reducing the destructive results of rising opioid consumption and its concomitant mortality, and give better treatment to those with the greatest need.
