Neuroscience Offers Insights Into the Opioid Epidemic

Most Americans say they’re interested in scientific discoveries, but they may be thinking of the kinds of findings that lead to new gadgets and wonder drugs. When it comes to discoveries about hazards and risks -- especially the risks of those wonder drugs -- Americans seem more likely to tune out.

Such ambivalence might help explain how opioid misuse became such a problem in America. Despite 20 years of warnings from scientists about the dangers of addiction, the rate of prescriptions has tripled between 1999 and today. It hit a peak around 2012 and has started to decline slightly, going from 81.2 per 100 people to a still-enormous 70.6 per 100, new data show. Indeed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. doctors wrote 259 million prescriptions for potentially addictive painkillers in 2014 -- enough for every adult in the country to have a bottle.