About
Voices for Non-Opioid Choices (“Voices”) is a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to preventing opioid addiction before it starts by increasing patient and provider access to non-opioid therapies and approaches to manage acute pain.
Acute pain patients often receive powerful, addictive medications to manage their pain. The surgical setting, in particular, has become a potential path to long-term opioid abuse in America.
Thank you to our NOPAIN Act co-sponsors
Roughly 80 opioid pills are prescribed to patients after orthopedic surgery, whether they need them or not.1
In 2022, over 131 million opioids were dispensed.
Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids increased by nearly five times from 1999 to 2020.3
To combat this dangerous cycle of abuse, Voices and our partners believe it is critical to prevent addiction before it starts by increasing availability and utilization of non-opioid approaches to pain management.
Voices and our partners believe that curbing the U.S. opioid epidemic requires systemic change — by individuals, providers and in communities.
1Bicket M, et al. (2017). Prescription opioid oversupply following orthopedic surgery: A prospective cohort study. American Pain Society annual scientific meeting 2017. https://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(17)30157-8/pdf
3Wide-ranging online data for epidemiologic research (WONDER). Atlanta, GA: CDC, National Center for Health Statistics; 2021.