Evening Standard comment: The NHS understates opioid use - it’s a problem; Trump’s big deal in doubt; It’s GDPR day

The Evening Standard's David Cohen has found from a Freedom of Information request that the number of people who have been prescribed opioid painkillers in England is twice the total previously released by the NHS: 6.2 million people rather than 3.1 million. That’s a significant figure.

It means the existing information released by the NHS significantly underestimated the scale of opioid use and the consequent opioid addiction.

By omitting three common opioid analgesic compounds, Co-codamol, Co-dydramol and Co-proxamol from the data, the figures seemed less alarming than they were. And it is a problem.

European studies suggest there is a four per cent addiction rate as a result of opioid use. If twice as many people are taking prescription opioids, then the addicts that result may be twice as many too.

That equates to real harm to real people: perhaps as many as 250,000, and their families.

But that’s not all. Cohen found that the total number of opioid analgesic prescriptions dispensed to 6.2 million patients in England is also significantly higher than previously thought, at 41.4 million.

This is 17.5 million more than the 23.9 million prescriptions that the NHS admitted to. So the amount we spent on opioids was £350 million, which is £87 million more than we were led to believe.

Again, this was because Co-codamol, Co-dydramol and Co-proxamol were not included in the data.

That means we have been spending tens of millions of pounds more than we previously thought on medication that does significant harm to significant numbers of people.

The first principle of medicine, as articulated by Hippocrates, is: do no harm.

Yet the NHS has spent tens of millions of pounds — money desperately needed elsewhere in the service — providing drugs that do real harm.

The Standard has brought the hitherto neglected problem of opioid addiction into the open; now the Government and the NHS must do more to deal with it.

• To read David Cohen's full Opioids Timebomb investigation, visit standard.co.uk/opioids

Trump’s big deal in doubt

The letter that President Trump sent to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, cancelling their meeting next month, was, it seems, personally dictated by its author.

So we should take seriously its statement that the US President “looks forward some day” to meeting Kim Jong-un.

The North Koreans, for their part, have handled the letter in a spirit more of sorrow than anger, declaring that they are ready at any time to meet the President. So while the meeting is off for now, there is still the possibility of it being rescheduled.

President Trump was right that this meeting was important for the world; it offered, as he said, a great opportunity for lasting peace and prosperity, one that had eluded his predecessors.

The reputation of the US will be diminished in this volatile region if the talks do not resume.

In particular, it seems remarkable that the South Korean government was not given advance notice of the letter.

Yet we all have a stake in the outcome of these talks aimed at securing nuclear disarmament by North Korea; we can only hope that both sides recognise that they have a mutual interest in securing a peaceful outcome to this fraught situation.

It’s GDPR day

There can be few people who do not feel more loved and wanted today, at least by companies who want to be in touch with them by email to market goods and services.

Many Londoners will have been bombarded by messages of varying degrees of desperation from companies that use their data and are now obliged by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation to seek their consent to do so.

The effect has been to change the way businesses conduct themselves; the upshot of the move may be more swingeing than expected.

The protection of personal data is serious: GDPR will make us take it properly to heart.