Israel Is Grappling With An Addiction Epidemic

The Taub Center report’s data is alarming. In the first half of the last decade, the use of oxycodone and fentanyl increased, with a sharp rise in fentanyl use beginning in 2014 after propoxyphene was banned, and limits were placed on the use of codeine. The report suggests that between 2012 and 2015, the rate of opioid consumption in Israel was the highest in the OECD. Data from the International Narcotics Control Board showed that Israel surpassed the United States by having the highest prescription narcotics consumption in the world in 2020, with fentanyl use skyrocketing beyond the equivalent of 140 milligrams of morphine per capita by the end of the last decade.

Most commonly prescribed opioid brand names in Israel include Percocet, Targin, ACTIQ, Oxycod, and OxyContin, which all contain either fentanyl or oxycodone as the active ingredient. The studies upon which the Taub Center report relies indicate that Israel’s fentanyl use is mostly among young people of lower socioeconomic status who are not suffering from cancer. 

The increased use of opioids, particularly fentanyl, has led to increased abuse and dependency, with dependency often developing in just a few weeks. The number of opioid poisonings has also increased, but due to religious restrictions, fewer autopsies are performed in Israel than in other countries, making the true extent of opioid overdose unknown.

Prof. Shauli Lev-Ran, an addiction psychiatrist and co-founder of the Israel Center on Addiction, says that in Israel, overdoses are not diagnosed in the same way as they are in the US, and that Israeli pathologists register deaths as due to respiratory depression or cardiac arrest rather than a drug overdose. He believes that a lot of overdoses may be going undiagnosed.