GAINESVILLE – “Here we are, America the addicted. How did we get here?”
Those were the words of Dallas Gay, keynote speaker at the kick-off breakfast for the 12th Annual HealthSmart Expo in the Gainesville Civic Center Wednesday morning.
Gay, a Gainesville businessman, lost his grandson, Jeffrey, to an opioid overdose and since that tragedy has been deeply involved in combating prescription drug abuse and opioid overdose rescue measures.
“The greatest healthcare crisis in the history of the United States is man-made,” Gay continued.
Gay said the crisis came into being over the last quarter-century as physicians endeavored to manage pain. “This set us on a path in the mid-90s to aggressively try to treat pain and reduce suffering. Certainly patients were in favor of that; certainly doctors wanted to help; the…American Pain Society was behind this; everyone was on board, particularly the pharmaceutical companies.”
While humanitarian in intent, that philosophy ushered in problems no one anticipated. “In 1995 OxyContin was released as a time-release opiate and advertised to be ‘not very addictive’.”
“Sales of narcotic pain killers soared,” Gay said. He explained that from 1999 to 2010 the average use by people receiving prescription pain killers quadrupled.
“We didn’t know it when this started but we know it now: the longer you take an opiate drug the greater the chance that you’re going to continue to take it; you’re going to want it, you’re going to need it, your body is going to demand it,” Gay said.
“So, if you take it for about ten days,” Gay said, detailing his claim, “the CDC says you have about a 25-percent risk that you’ll be taking it a year from now. The longer you take it the more at risk you are.”
“We’re 5-percent of the world’s population,” Gay said, highlighting the problem as exceptionally widespread in the United States, “and we’re taking more than 80-percent of the narcotics. So here we are, America the addicted.”
“Shame on us as a country,” Gay said. “We as individuals are addicted to the expectation: ‘You’re the doctor; I expect you to fix me! I’m not responsible. I hurt, you fix me, and if you don’t fix me I’m going to type a few words on my phone and the world’s going to know what a lousy doctor you are!’”
“It’s our expectation that’s really out of line,” Gay said affirmatively.
“We’ve spent 23-years aggressively treating pain and the question is: ‘Has it been worth it?’.”
Gay ended by saying, “As long as we think it’s someone else’s problem it’ll always be a problem.”
MOST FIT COMPANY AWARDS
Honored as the Most Fit Companies of 2018 were:
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Small business (less than 50 employees): Georgia Poultry Improvement Association
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Medium business (between 51 and 250 employees): Boehringer Ingelheim
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Large business (more than 250 employees): ProCare RX
