TACKLING PRESCRIPTION drug abuse will hardly make a dent in America’s ongoing opioid crisis in the coming years, a new study suggests.

“People who start using prescription opioids, at some point, may transition to the next stage, (and) as the supply-side shifts happen, we see increased availability of illicit opioids,” says Jagpreet Chhatwal, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a senior scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital‘s Institute for Technology Assessment. He is a co-senior author of the study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open. Read full story here.