Skip to main content

1980 Letter from B.U. Graduate Student Doctor May Have Inadvertently Fueled Opioid Epidemic

The one-paragraph letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine was widely interpreted by doctors as showing that opioids posed almost no risk of addiction — although it contained little proof and that's not exactly what it said, anyway.

The one-paragraph letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine was widely interpreted by doctors as showing that opioids posed almost no risk of addiction — although it contained little proof and that's not exactly what it said, anyway.…