Speaker Biography

Scott Stevens

Journalist, Author, USA

Title: Look what dragged the cat in: The rise of the opioid crisis

Scott Stevens
Biography:

Stevens is a journalist, posting regularly on health and alcohol issues for online news services and is a founding influencer at the world's largest medical portal, HealthTap. Stevens blends intensive evidence-based research, wit, journalistic objectivity, blunt personal dialogue and no-nonsense business perspective in his four award-winning health and addiction books.Stevens' work has appeared on CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, and ABC.  His first two white papers made waves as the country begins what he calls “a shift in alcohol policy and public dialogue from what people think alcohol does FOR them to what it does TO them.” The first white paper is called “Six Signs the Next 10 Years For The Alcohol Biz Will Be Like The Last 20 For Tobacco.” The second was “How Others' Alcohol Use Became Your Business: Toxin-omics.” Both were Addicted Minds exclusives in early 2016.

Abstract:

The decade of the 2010's shelled hospitals and first responders with an explosion of opioid-related illness, injury, and death. Preventable drug overdoses tallied 54,793 lives lost in 2016 – an increase of 391 percent since 1999. Accidental drug overdose deaths increased 327 percent over the same period. The majority of OD deaths (38,000) involve opioids, The drug category most frequently involved in opioid overdoses and growing at the fastest pace includes fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and tramadol. The fentanyl category of opioids accounted for nearly half of opioid-related deaths. The dirty cat in the litter, heroin, accounted for the second highest number of deaths, claiming 14,606 lives. Western countries struggle with what the opioid cat dragged in: Hard-to-treat opioid addictions, fatal relapses, and needless loss of mainly young lives. Now legislators, first responders, treatment pros, and those in the medical field are forced to focus not on the death toll the cat dragged in, but instead what dragged the cat in.