Researchers are reporting a link between doctor-targeted marketing of opioid products and the increase in U.S. deaths from overdoses.
In a county-by-county analysis, they found that when drug companies increased their opioid marketing budgets by just $5.29 per 1,000 population, the number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors went up by 82 percent and the opioid death rate was 9 percent higher a year later.“It really doesn’t take much marketing to increase the number of deaths,” lead author Dr. Scott Hadland, a pediatrician and researcher at Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction, told Reuters Health by phone.
