May 21, 2016 2 min read

Consider this grim fact: The United States accounts for about 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but consumes 80 percent of its painkillers, according to the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians.

This translates to about 110 tons of opiates annually. It’s made opioid addiction a leading killer, with almost 19,000 people dying in America in 2014 after becoming hooked on prescription pain relievers, with an additional 10,500 deaths occurring because of heroin addiction, the American Society of Addiction Medicine has reported. Residents of Washington and Greene counties have become all too aware of opioid addiction’s toll over the last couple of years.

Pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration have been blamed by some for this crisis, while others have pointed to doctors who are overeager to prescribe. Regardless of who should bear responsibility, we are unique in the world.

This regrettable fact was underscored in an article in The New York Times last week that explained how large swatches of the world are, in fact, not getting the painkillers that they need.

Some patients in the developing world, in such disparate locales as Kenya and Trinidad, are doing without painkillers thanks to over-regulation of prescription medicines within their countries, the cost involved or a lack of suppliers. And some cultures simply emphasize stoicism – gritting your teeth and dealing with it – rather than taking medicine that might offer relief from agonizing pain. It adds up to over 5 billion people spread over the world who do not have access to medicine that can control pain. That even includes patients who are recovering from surgery.

Diederik Lohman, the associate director of the health and human rights division of Human Rights Watch, told the newspaper, “We shouldn’t forget that these are medicines that are really essential in our health care systems. While clearly there are issues with some prescribing practices, there’s also clearly a risk of vilifying these medicines.”

When it comes to painkillers, unfortunately it seems that neither this country, nor many other corners of the globe, can get it right.