Training includes: description of our “legal drug culture”; history of opioid use; effects of opioid addiction, attempts to modify prescribing practices and control access to opioids; dangers of fentanyl and other analogues; identification of high risk people; systems for overdose reversal; inadequacy of psychosocial treatment alone and the description of the current anti-addiction drugs for opioid dependence (methadone, Suboxone and Vivitrol). Research results will be presented.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
•Understand roles of pharmaceutical companies, physician prescribing practices, legislation, marketing, cultural attitudes about discomfort and the history of opioid development in driving the current opioid epidemic;
•Develop a strategy after successful opioid overdose reversal to decrease the potential for return to opioid use;
•Recommend the different anti-addiction pharmacotherapies;
•Develop a three-pronged treatment strategy which has the best chances for successful outcome.