Why did opioid prescribing loosen in the 1990s?

Through the 1980s, undertreated pain was a documented and serious problem, particularly in cancer care and at the end of life. The reform impulse of the 1990s — take patients’ reports of pain seriously, treat pain as a clinical priority rather than something to be endured — was a response to that. It is important to say this plainly, because the account in which the whole episode was simply a marketing conspiracy is both wrong and unhelpful. Real clinicians changed real practice for reasons they believed, and many patients benefited.

Where did “pain as the fifth vital sign” come from?

The phrase entered circulation from the American Pain Society in the mid-1990s and was adopted within the Veterans Health Administration at the end of that decade. It is now widely attributed to The Joint Commission’s 2001 pain standards. That attribution is contested. In a 2017 historical account published in JAMA, a Joint Commission author set out what the 2001 standards did and did not require, arguing that a good deal of what was later ascribed to them — routine numeric pain scoring, and the treatment of the pain score as a fifth vital sign — was not in them.

We flag the dispute rather than resolve it, because the mechanism matters more than the blame. Whatever its precise origin, the effect was a measurement practice that made a subjective score into an operational target. Once a number becomes a target, it stops being a good measurement — a pattern that repeats exactly in step four, in the opposite direction.

What is a pill mill?

Expanded prescribing, aggressive promotion of long-acting formulations, and a dispensing environment with weak controls added up to an opportunity. Operations that existed to move volume — clinics with a cash-only model, a physician willing to sign, and a compliant dispensing arrangement — scaled up. The pills went into general circulation far beyond the people they were written for.

How concentrated were pill mills in Florida in 2010?

The concentration became measurable. Reporting on Florida’s policy response, CDC investigators recorded that in 2010, Florida was home to 98 of the 100 US physicians who dispensed the highest quantities of oxycodone directly from their offices.

That sentence is worth reading precisely, because it is routinely repeated in a looser form. The published figure is not “98 of the top 100 opioid prescribers in the country.” It is 98 of the 100 physicians who dispensed the highest quantities of oxycodone directly from their own offices — a much narrower and much more damning category, because office dispensing was the specific mechanism the pill mill model depended on. We use the accurate version.

The same report notes what happened to that number once the state acted: high-volume oxycodone dispensing prescribers fell from 98 in 2010 to 13 in 2012 and zero in 2013. That is what step three covers — including what it did not fix.

Frequently asked questions

How did the opioid crisis start in America?

On the prescription side, it grew out of the 1990s. Reformers pushed to take pain seriously after years of undertreatment, especially in cancer care and at the end of life. Expanded prescribing, aggressive promotion of long-acting formulations and weak dispensing controls then opened commercial space for pill mills, and their pills moved into general circulation far beyond the people they were written for.

What happened to the Florida pill mills?

Florida acted, and the numbers fell fast. CDC investigators reported that high-volume oxycodone dispensing prescribers in the state dropped from 98 in 2010 to 13 in 2012 and to zero in 2013. Step three covers that crackdown, including what it did not fix.

Were 98 of the top 100 opioid prescribers in Florida?

Not quite, and the difference matters. The published figure is that in 2010 Florida was home to 98 of the 100 US physicians who dispensed the highest quantities of oxycodone directly from their own offices. That is a narrower category than all opioid prescribers, and office dispensing was the specific mechanism the pill mill model depended on.