CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The number of opioid prescriptions has fallen across the U.S. and in West Virginia over the last three years, slowing the nearly two-decade rise of narcotic painkillers, which still kill more Americans each year than any other drug.
According to IMS Health, a global health information and technology firm, the rate of opioid prescribing in the U.S. has dropped since its peak in 2012. The drop is the first that has been reported since the early 1990s, when OxyContin first hit the market and pain became “the fifth vital sign” doctors were encouraged to more aggressively treat.
Between 2014 and 2015, West Virginia saw the greatest change in prescribing practices, with the number of opioid scripts dropping by more than 13 percent. Nationally, the number of opioid prescriptions written in the U.S. fell from 244,462,567 in 2014 to 227,780,915 in 2015, according to IMS Health.
Dr. Rahul Gupta, state health officer and commissioner of the Bureau for Public Health, said the decline in prescribing rates for West Virginia has to do, in part, with legislation and state-level policies aimed at curbing the problem…