Association between non-medical and prescriptive usage of opioids.

Understanding and managing prescription opioid abuse is one of the major challenges in pain management worldwide. The relationships between prescriptive usage of opioids and reported morbidity at the national level, using data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), were examined. When the major prescription opioids were evaluated, the association between prescriptive medical use in kilograms and reported morbidity, as measured by a ratio between the two, was similar for the intermediate-potency opioids (hydrocodone, methadone, oxycodone, and morphine).