“The United States of Opioids confirms Harry Nelson’s place as the leading expert on U.S. behavioral healthcare. Nelson adds a compelling legal perspective on the opioid crisis. We ignore his call to action at our own peril.” – Dr. Reef Karim, television personality, international speaker, author, and neuroscientist
"If I had to choose one person to help people understand what's really going on in American healthcare, it's Harry Nelson." –Daniel Abrahamson, Legal Director, Drug Policy Alliance
“Harry Nelson brings so much knowledge and compassion to the difficult problem of opioid overdoses, addiction, and chronic pain. Nelson is a person who makes us all better.” –Naresh Nenon, CEO, Chromologic
“Nelson’s book should be required reading for medical, nursing, law, public policy students, and anyone trying to understand this country’s drug and mental health policies and how we, as a society, can do a better job at meeting future challenges.” –Nicholas Merkin, CEO, Compliagent
NEW INSIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF OPIOIDS
• 100 Years of Opioids: “The roots of the opioid crisis were evident a century ago in uniquely American attitudes about pain and addiction.”
• 40 Year Exponential Rising Linear Curve of Overdose Deaths: “For all the talk of a 20-year problem, America’s spiraling overdose death rate across all drugs traces back to the 1970s–suggesting a “push down here, pop up there problem” of underlying social causes rather than an opioid-specific issue.”
• The Forgotten Victims: “50 million Americans are suffering with chronic pain unable to get opioids because their doctors are now afraid to prescribe. These are the forgotten victims of this crisis.”
• The Need to Hold Insurers Responsible: “A lot of blame is placed at the feet of doctors for blindly prescribing opioids. It’s true that we can do a better job of training physicians on treating pain and addiction, but the bigger issue is structural. The economics of practice put physicians under enormous time pressure for fast solutions, meaning pills, as opposed to other options. It takes 30 seconds to say yes, 30 minutes to say no. No one talks about the way insurance company decisions about what they will pay for means we are a country that wants pills, not alternative solutions.”
• The Hidden Suicide Crisis: “One in five opioid overdoses is definitively a suicide. I expect that we’ll ultimately see data confirming that 1 in 3 is a suicide (with the other 2 being accidental). When are we going to have a real conversation about Americans killing themselves in unprecedented numbers?”
• The Limits of Policy: “The real problem of the Opioid Crisis is that this isn’t something the government can solve. The government can slow down deaths, but the real solution to the deeper social issues driving the Opioid Crisis is in all of our hands. In our families, communities, schools, and workplaces, we need to develop an awareness and skills to do the work of ending shame, engaging people, talking about what people are experiencing, and supporting each other. Only by changing ourselves can we make inroads in this crisis.”
• The Unspoken Problem with Talking About Pain: “One of the hardest things to talk about is pain. One in five Americans reports chronic pain as a daily or weekly problem in their lives. Nobody wants to hear about is the mind-body connection, meaning the evidence that, in many cases, stress and trauma led to the disease state and pain, and just being aware of the linkage makes people better. People in pain recoil from any suggestion their pain isn’t real. (It is. It’s just that much of it has been caused by stress, and can be relieved by awareness and attention to the stress.) Doctors who get paid for treating pain have an economic incentive to ignore the extent to which focusing on the underlying stress address pain. I know many doctors who make their livings do surgeries that they themselves would never get. We could tackle a big piece of the pain puzzle with awareness and understanding.”
• The DEA as the Biggest Problem of All: “Of all of the government agencies that failed us, the DEA should be at the top of the list of the people who screwed up in the opioid crisis. They were asleep at the wheel as the country was flooded with fentanyl from China and Mexico. Meanwhile, they prevent the research we desperately need on cannabis and other alternatives to opioids. How the DEA continues to gets away with being a problem in addressing the opioid crisis is a mystery.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When Michael Jackson died of a drug overdose in 2009, his doctors – panicked by the coming investigation – called Harry Nelson. Over the past 15 years, this pattern was repeated in one deadly celebrity overdose after another.
Doctors turn to Harry because, for over a decade, he is the leading legal expert on prescribing practices, pain treatment, addiction and behavioral health. He has become known for turning healthcare safety disasters into learning opportunities out of which safer, better healthcare can emerge.
Government regulators and policymakers have turned to Nelson, the founder of L.A.’s largest healthcare firm, Nelson Hardiman, to advise on most sensitive and challenging emerging health policy issues. He has been called “America’s #1 healthcare lawyer” and a “leading expert on our healthcare future”. In 2009, he became one of the first lawyers in the country to develop a framework for compliance in cannabis, helping to shape California law and pushing for expanded clinical research on other plant-based controlled substances, and continues to play a leading role in the expansion of telehealth and machine learning in medicine.
Nelson's latest book weaves together his deep dive into the challenges of treating America's pain epidemic, the growing problem of addiction, and the overdose deaths. Nelson takes on questions that have gone unaddressed, including the parallel crisis of rising suicide rates, anxiety, chronic stress, and a lost sense of purpose. The book is the first to offer a vision and roadmap out of the opioid crisis, including practical tools not just for healthcare providers, but for parents, employers, religious communities, and everyone affected by America's deadliest health disaster.
Nelson's previous book (with co-author Rob Fuller) was From ObamaCare to Trumpcare: Why You Should Care (2017), an analysis of America’s healthcare policy challenges that drew interest from Congress for its thoughtful analysis of the history of US health policy.
Beyond his writing and legal work, Nelson has played a key role in education and advocacy, including his leadership of the Behavioral Health Association of Providers, sharing insights on evolving challenges with 30,000+ subscribers and federal and state policy policymakers.
Harry was born in Brazil, grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and is an alumni of the University of Michigan. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and four children.
See recent articles and publications:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/people/nelsonharry/
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