A Close Look at Denial of Pain Meds to People Who Use Drugs

published on April 18, 2024 by Doug Johnson in Filter

For people who use drugs, accessing prescription pain medication when needed can be a severe challenge. A new paper digs into this issue by investigating factors that may cause a doctor to prescribe or not prescribe to people who use drugs (PWUD)—and what people do if they’re turned away.

“I think the way the health care system is developed is not necessarily with a harm reduction approach,” Evelyne Piret, one of the paper’s authors, told Filter.

The paper was published on March 28 in the Harm Reduction Journal. It studies outcomes for 1,168 Vancouver-based participants who had asked to be prescribed pain medication—of any kind, such as opioids, gabapentin, muscle relaxants, over-the-counter medicine like tylenol, cannabinoids or unspecified drugs—between 2012 and 2022. The pain that people hoped to treat was related to situations including surgery, injuries and various types of chronic pain, among others.

This data came from three ongoing studies with PWUD in the city: The Vancouver Injection Drug Users Study, the AIDS Care Cohort to Evaluate Exposure to Survival Services, and the At-Risk Youth Study. All participants in these projects were using banned drugs at the time they joined…