Rut-roh. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning about another way people may be getting access to opioid medications: through pets.
Pets can't talk to vets. At least, they can't speak English or French or Spanish or Chinese or Jersey or some other language that veterinarians will understand. Therefore, they can't say, "no, I don't really have pain" or "this guy here is taking my pills" or "my owner is deliberately hurting me or making me look ill to get opioid medications" or " have you considered prescribing physical therapy instead?" Thus, veterinarians often have to rely on owners to get the poop on what's happening.
This leaves pets susceptible to being paw-ns in the ongoing opioid misuse crisis, which results in over 1,000 emergency room visits and 115 deaths in the United States each day. Pets can unwittingly serve as cute conduits to get opioid prescriptions from veterinarians. In fact, as the FDA warning indicated, humans can even get human opioid medications from vets because there is currently a lack of opioids specifically for pets. Recuvyra, which is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, is the only opioid that is approved by the FDA for use in animals but is no longer marketed by its manufacturer.
The crisis that has gotten out of hand is now also seemingly out of paw. According to a perspectives paper recently published in the American Journal of Public Health, 13% of 189 veterinarians in Colorado who completed an online survey were "aware that an animal owner had intentionally made an animal ill, injured an animal, or made an animal seem ill or injured to obtain opioid medications." Ugh. This is awful.
The survey was the result of collaboration between the paper's authors (Derek S. Mason, Liliana Tenney, and Lee S. Newman from the University of Colorado and Peter W. Hellyer from Colorado State University) and a local veterinary society. The survey also found that 44% of the responding veterinarians knew of "opioid abuse or misuse by either a client or a veterinary practice staff member; and 12% were aware of veterinary staff opioid abuse and diversion."
All of this shows the extent of the opioid crisis. Currently, the vet and the pet communities seem ill-prepared to handle the situation. Cats may look disapprovingly at their owners but can't do much more to stop owners from using them to get medications. Pets, to my knowledge, do not work as opioid dealers to make money or bones. Thus, it is up to humans to protect pets from humans.
As the perspective paper indicated, the systems aren't in place in many places to track vet opioid prescribing and train vets to look for and deal with signs of opioid misuse among staff members or pet owners. Research is needed to explore alternative ways of addressing a pet's pain. Moreover, only 17 states mandate that veterinarians report animal abuse to the authorities.
Indeed, the opioid crisis is a complex systems problem, meaning that broken systems have been leading to the supply of and demand for opioids. And those systems unfortunately now include many of our furry (or scaly) friends.
