| Hans-Günter Meyer-Thompson | Opioide
UK. Summary and slides from recent meeting of APPG on opiate painkiller dependence
(...) APPG Secretariat member Harry Shapiro, introduced the topic, characterising the situation as a ‘public health disaster’ which is killing hundreds of people a year and ruining the lives of millions more. According to BMJ, there are 28m people in the UK with have a diagnosis of chronic pain, nearly half of whom are in receipt of prescription painkillers. One telling statistic: between 1991-2014 there was a 666% increase in prescriptions for Tramadol.
(...) Nearly a third of all prescriptions for OP across the EU are written in the UK. (APPG – All Party Parliamenatry Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence, 02.11.2016)