Editorial: Tamper-resistant painkillers a quick fix for prescription pill abuse

Our society is pill-happy. Whether it’s a fever, a headache or allergies, pills provide a simple fix for a variety of ailments. And when we’re in pain, pills are there to assuage any discomfort.

Used properly, prescription painkillers, or opioids, alleviate pain symptoms after surgical operations or as a result of other more serious medical conditions. But some people use them for other purposes — namely, getting high.

According to a study by the Partnership for a Drug Free America, one in five teens has abused prescription pain medications, such as OxyContin.

To hasten the high, opioids are frequently crushed up and snorted, or even mixed with water and injected intravenously,according to The New York Times . But now, pharmaceutical companies are fighting back. They’ve taken a direct approach to combating misuse, an approach that, even if only a partial solution, should still curtail misuse.

Companies are developing a new type of opioid that resists tampering. While some pills are rubber-like and more difficult to crush, others trigger adverse reactions when altered and then inhaled.

Certain pills have an inner core that, when externally crushed and blended with the medicinal outer layer, neutralizes the potential high. Other pills produce unpleasant reactions such as flushing or itching when they’re meddled with.

Some might argue that substance abuse is best treated through education and counseling. Those who understand the consequences of abuse should be less inclined to engage. Sure, those are important preventative measures and they shouldn’t be lessened in the wake of more resilient drugs — but tamper-resistant pills are an innovative and very direct approach to reducing abuse. They’re a quick fix that’s not a solution to the overall problem, but a preventative measure that should ultimately curb the number of abusers.

Not every teen or college kid spends their Friday nights abusing prescription pills — there are far more out binge drinking. This doesn’t mean, though, that non-users are detached from the prescription painkiller problem. A 2008 federal survey found that an estimated 4.7 million Americans has used prescription pain relievers in the previous month for reasons other than pain relief. Opioid abuse costs at least $11 billion per year in excess medical care.

America stands in the wake of a health care conundrum, and it’s clear that prescription pill abuse contributes to health care expenditures. This further merits a quick solution.

Unless these tamper-resistant pills become ubiquitous in the pharmaceutical world — assuming they can be cheaply produced — perhaps they won’t deter the problem to the maximum degree. Also, these new pills can’t protect against overdoses or the lesser abuser who chooses to swallow a few pills incrementally.

Yet when it comes to substance abuse, the causes are too diverse to allow an all-encompassing solution.

It seems the small measures, such as these new pills, are the best way to combat misuse of this nature.