BOSTON — While the scourge of opioid addiction continues to affect Massachusetts, the number of people getting legal prescriptions for heavily addictive medicines is falling, according to the latest federal data.
Massachusetts had the second lowest opioid prescription rate in New England in 2022, following Vermont, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Health care providers in the Bay State wrote 30.8 opioid prescriptions for every 100 residents, the federal agency reported.
That’s a slight drop from the previous year but a substantial decline from the 66 per 100 prescription rate in 2006, when the CDC began tracking the data, which lags by two years.
New Hampshire, which has also seen declining numbers of opioid prescriptions in recent years, had the third-lowest rate in New England in 2022, with 32 prescriptions for every 100 residents. Maine had the highest rate in the region, or 35.2 per 100 residents.
Nationally, the overall prescription rate was 39.5 prescriptions per 100 people in 2022, according to the CDC data.
Curbing opioid addiction has been a major focus on Beacon Hill for a number of years, with hundreds of millions of dollars being devoted to expanding treatment and prevention efforts.
For many, opioid addiction has its roots in prescription painkillers such as Oxycontin and Percocet, which led them to street-bought heroin and fentanyl once those prescriptions ran out.
In 2016, then-Gov. Charlie Baker and lawmakers pushed through a raft of rules to curb over-prescribing of opioids. Those included a cap on new prescriptions written in any seven-day period and a requirement that doctors consult a state prescription monitoring database before prescribing an additive opioid.
Meanwhile opioid manufacturers have been hammered with hundreds of lawsuits from the states and local governments over their role in fueling a wave of opioid addiction. Attorney General Maura Healey’s office recently agreed to a multi-billion dollar settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma.
Supporters of the tougher requirements say they have saved lives by dramatically reducing the number of heavily addictive opioids being prescribed.
Pain management groups say the regulatory backlash has made some doctors worried about writing prescriptions for opioids, depriving patients of treatment.
There were 2,125 confirmed or suspected opioid-related deaths in 2023 — which is 10%, or 232, fewer fatal overdoses than the same period in 2022, according to the latest data from the state Department of Public Health.
Last year’s opioid-related overdose death rate also decreased by 10% to 30.2 per 100,000 people compared with 33.5 in 2022, DPH said.
Health officials attributed the persistently high death rates to the effects of an “increasingly poisoned drug supply,” primarily with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Fentanyl was present in 90% of the overdose deaths where a toxicology report was available, state officials noted.
Nationally, there were 107,543 overdose deaths reported in the U.S. in 2023, a 3% decrease from the estimated 111,029 in 2022, according to CDC data.
On Beacon Hill, state lawmakers are being pressured to take more aggressive steps to expand treatment and prevention options for those struggling with opioid addiction.
Last month, a coalition of more than 100 public health and community-based organizations wrote to House and Senate leaders urging them to pass substance abuse legislation before the Dec. 31 end of the two-year session.
“There isn’t a day that goes by without several people in the Commonwealth dying from an overdose or losing loved ones to this disease,” they wrote. “As individuals and institutions working to combat the opioid epidemic, we know the Commonwealth must do more to prevent addiction, help people find pathways to treatment and recovery, and save lives.”
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.