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 90% of all surgical patients receive an opioid prescription following surgery.1
In 2023, 125 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed in the U.S., and nearly 8.6 million Americans reported misusing prescription opioids.2
Approximately 2 out of 3 deaths, or 68% of all drug overdose deaths, involved opioids in 2024.3
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.
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1 Singh, K., Murali, A., Stevens, H., Vydiswaran, V. G. V., Bohnert, A., Brummett, C. M., & Fernandez, A. C. (2022). Predicting persistent opioid use after surgery using electronic health record and patient-reported data. Surgery, 172(1), 241–248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surg.2022.01.008.
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). “About Prescription Opioids.” CDC Overdose Prevention. (2025). https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/prescription-opioids.html.
3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). “Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts.” CDC National Center for Health Statistics. (2025). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm.