Tweet 1. How the hell could the US authorities refuse to accept that Darvon& Darvocet (DXP) have a major responsibility for the worst opiate epidemic of all time?

When somebody talks or writes about the ongoing opioid-epidemic they usually say that the epidemic started mid or late 1990. I have heard this in many years now – but I cannot agree with all of those who says that the epidemic started in mid or late 1990s.

My truth looks different, and it is simply because my wife and I have been studying another opioid – namely (Dextro)(Propoxyphene (DXP) - trademarks in the US, mainly Darvon and Darvocet - more than 25 years and we wrote and defended two doctoral dissertations ( 2000 and 2001)

When people - representatives of all kinds of government agencies and not least journalists - repeatedly write/say that the epidemic began in the mid or late 1990s and you completely avoid showing a source for this claim - you could call this behavior FAKE NEWS.

Now I will not do this - I am not that kind of man - but I want to help authorities and journalists with that task. Many years in research and many years in investigating journalism (PhD in Public Health and BS in journalism) have taught me to be very careful about facts and I will therefore share my knowledge with those who want to know the truth.

My data comes from INCB - The International Narcotic Control Board in Vienna - a group operating under WHO. In my first table I show what year a number of preparations were notes by INCB in term of consumption of some substances that we are interested in.

In 1996 the following preparations - Codeine, Methadone and Fentanyl - were noted at INCB for consumption on the US medicine market and 1999 both Oxycodone and Hydrocodone were on sale in the US. But “everybody” in US has forgotten to talk about the painkiller Propoxyphene (DXP) that came out on the US market already 1957 and it seems that “everybody” - except me - remember that DXP was banned in US in Nov 2010.

DXP was on the market more than 40 years before the other opioids. Around 165 000 persons could have died. The consumption of DXP were around 1 985 000 kg.

It would be decent that those using the term "mid or late 90s" - also counting the substance DXP - that have been on the US market for more than 40 years before the other opiates entered the US market.

I simply cannot understand why it would be so difficult for Americans to remember that DXP came out on the market already 1957. I repeat the substance was banned in 2010 - from one day to another - a ruthless act by the FDA. It took many years before FDA banned DXP, and when they this they did it from one day to another. In UK, Sweden and EU the authorities gave the DXP users many months to change drug, they phased out the drug in a decent way.

They should be ashamed of this behavior, lots of people then turned to heroin - and many, many died from ODs.

Hundreds of thousands of DXP user were out of the DXP pills after Nov 19^th 2010 and many started to use heroin, that was cheap and easy to get.  During the years 1957 – 2016 – 3 099 944 kg was consumed in the USA. When we analyze this figure and use The Jonasson Factor, we can estimate the number of fatal seizures to approximately 258 000 persons during these years, a figure completely unknown to the American public

Some of the consumption data  about DXP during the years I used  this link http://bit.ly/2GklK7P there is our main source: Narcotic Drugs - Technical Report  and at present there is data as far back as 2001 (the years 1996-2000) and on that page there is data from http://bit.ly/305Ock2

On the mentioned INCB pages you will find data on all drugs from 2001 to 2017. We have cooperated with INCB since 2003 and we got DXP data from them back to 1980, the first year DXP was noted.

We estimated DXP from 1957 – 1979, thanks to our new The Jonasson Factor, see other pages in my MasterClass report.