The War on Opioids Probably Helped Kill Prince

Pop legend Prince died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016 probably because he thought he was taking black market counterfeit Vicodin.

Today officials announced they were closing the investigation into Prince’s death and would not be filing any charges because they don’t know where he got the pills from and could find no evidence that any of his associates knew that the “Vicodin” he had been taken was actually laced with fentanyl.

Remarkably, at the same time officials are announcing that there will be no charges over the drugs that actually killed Prince, officials also announced a civil settlement with a doctor who had prescribed painkillers to Prince’s associates, knowing full well that the drugs would actually go to the musician. These were not the drugs that killed Prince, yet the doctor who helped Prince get access to painkillers through third parties has agreed to pay $30,000 and subject himself to federal monitoring for two years.

There does not even seem to be any acknowledgment here that efforts to make it harder for Prince to get his hands on the painkillers he had developed an addiction to might have resulted in him seeking out black market medications. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

“Doctors are trusted medical professionals and, in the midst of our opioid crisis, they must be part of the solution,” U.S. Attorney Greg Brooker said in a statement announcing the settlement. “As licensed professionals, doctors are held to a high level of accountability in their prescribing practices, especially when it comes to highly addictive painkillers. The U.S. attorney’s office and the DEA will not hesitate to take action against healthcare providers who fail to comply with the Controlled Substances Act. We are committed to using every available tool to stem the tide of opioid abuse.”

Just today Jacob Sullum took note of a report showing opioid overdose deaths increasing in dramatic fashion even as official opioid prescriptions decline. That’s partly because lack of access to the drug through doctors is leading those who are addicted to black market sources, where people purchase pain-killers of unknown provenance that may be laced with any number of substances, including fentanyl.

The circumstances of Prince’s death should be a massive warning to the feds that cracking down on doctors is the exact wrong way to prevent overdoses.

Also today, previously unseen footage of Prince practicing and performing “Nothing Compares 2 U” in 1984, years before he handed it over to Sinead O’Connor, has been released by his estate: