Rate of addiction with narcotics is less than 1%? Perhaps not...

Well, I'm not sure if this is the study that forms the basis of the previously mentioned claim, but I was steered in this direction by people familiar with the topic. If it is, then Houston, we have a problem.



This was a retrospective study of patient files from the 1970's. The authors did not state any inclusion criteria other than "...patients who received at least one narcotic..." and there is no mention of how long the patients were followed to see if addiciton developed, what the criteria was for addiction, drug history of the patients, and duration of narcotic use while inpatient...just to name a few. In addition, this looked only at the patients from one hospital in Boston - no mention of the socioeconomic, racial, gender, age, or other demographic data of the patients - yet the authors conclude that "despite widespread use of narcotic drugs in hospitals, the development of addiction is rare in medical patients with no history of addiction."



It is difficult to understand how this study has then been applied to different patient populations in different parts of the country without regard to the undefined criteria that is vital to understand the context of the study.