The impact of an easy access drug supply management policy law on the consumption and abuse of opioids in Catalonia: A population-based study
Author
Carrilero, Neus
Mora, Toni
García-Altés, Anna
Publication date
2022ISSN
0955-3959
Abstract
Background: Over the last two decades, the rise in opioid prescription has worsened health outcomes worldwide, increasing both levels of abuse and mortality rates. In order to reduce the scale of this public health problem, new policies have been implemented in many countries. In 2012, Spain adopted new legislation on opioid prescription (the ROE law), which meant that practitioners no longer needed to obtain extra authorisation in order to prescribe strong opioids. The objective of the paper is to assess the impact of this law on opioid use and abuse in Catalonia, Spain. Methods: We established two measures of the use of strong and weak opioids: DDDs, and abuse. We used benzodiazepines and antidepressants as controls, and adjusted for age, sex, drug co-payment level, death or near death, cancer diagnosis, morbidity group, and type of prescription. The data were obtained from administrative and dispensing drug databases in a population of 7.5 million inhabitants. We estimated two-way fixed effects using difference in difference models. Results: The ROE law impacted reducing the monthly use of strong opioids by 0.903 DDDs, representing a 3.15% decrease in the mean monthly use of strong opioids. However, abuse rose 1.86 times compared with the average pre-ROE value, which represents an increase of 11,190 months of opioid abuse (i.e., an 11.33% of all monthly opioids use). Conclusion: The abolition of the duplicate prescription programme for strong opioids led to a reduction in the average monthly use of strong opioids, but an increase in abuse.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
32 - Politics
33 - Economics. Economic science
61 - Medical sciences
614 - Public health and hygiene. Accident prevention
Keywords
Ús d'opioides
Adicció
Subministrament de fàrmacs
Uso de opioides
Adicción
Suministro de fármacos
Use of opioids
Addiction
Supply of drugs
Pages
8
Publisher
Elsevier
Collection
101;
Is part of
International Journal of Drug Policy
Citation
Carrilero, Neus; Mora Corral, Toni; García-Altés, Anna. The impact of an easy access drug supply management policy law on the consumption and abuse of opioids in Catalonia: A population-based study. International Journal of Drug Policy, 2022, 101, 103562. Disponible en: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395921004801?via%3Dihub>. Fecha de acceso: 13 ene. 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103562
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
Rights
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/