Congress has passed, and President Obama has signed, a bill aimed at the opioid addiction crisis — although no funding is attached to pay for the measures the bill contains.

Ironically, the crisis appears to be taking an outsized toll on women over 50, according to an article on Grandparents.com, which said that “[t]here has been a 450 percent increase in the number of deaths among women since 1999, in particular, a statistic attributed to opioid use.”

The article added that “the death rate for middle-aged women has spiked enormously” — since they are not only more likely to have chronic pain, but in treating them, doctors are more likely to give them prescription pain relievers and to do so in higher doses.

Related: Doctors face opioid dilemma

Women are also more likely to use them longer than men do.

In signing the bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, Obama said that it provided “modest steps” to address the opioid epidemic.

However, he also criticized Republicans for “fail[ing] to provide any real resources for those seeking addiction treatment to get the care that they need.” Republicans had blocked $920 million in funding that Democrats had sought to add to the bill for addiction treatment.

The article cited a report to Congress by Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, that said that 2.1 million people are suffering substance use disorders related to opioid pain relievers.

Addiction 'entirely through medical use'

Dr. Andrew Kolodny of the group Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing pointed to both prescription opioids such as Oxycodone, Percocet or Fentanyl and heroin as sharing the blame for the rise in addiction.

He was quoted saying, “Use of these drugs has increased very rapidly over the past 20 years — in fact, there’s been a 900 percent increase since 1997. That’s referring to both prescription opioids and heroin.”

While Kolodny said in the piece that young people become exposed to prescription opioids through sports injuries or dental work, switching to heroin when they can no longer access prescription drugs and then dying of overdoses, older Americans are coming to addiction “almost entirely … through medical use.”

But older Americans stay on prescription opioids, with their doctors referring them to pain specialists who keep boosting the dose, resulting in a much higher death rate in the older group than in the younger.

In particular, middle-age women, who are more likely to seek doctors because of chronic pain problems, are the ones suffering the heaviest toll.

Other factors that could play a role in women’s addiction struggles are the potential for them to take opioids for anxiety or tension as well as pain, and possible biological factors, such as body fat/water percentages, that could contribute to the potential for toxic drug effects. In addition, physicians are not well trained in pain management — and then there’s the very real withdrawal suffered by patients who try to stop.

Instant Insights /

Obama signs bill as opioids take toll on older women

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