Can Dual Prescriptions for Opioids and Tranquilizers Increase Your Risk of Dying?

The study described here seems to have particular relevance to the US, given the runaway rate of prescription of opioids, and the overdoses therefrom:

On another occasion a patient, a heroin addict, accused me of murdering him because I would not prescribe diazepam for him. In actual fact, I believed that precisely the opposite was almost the case: that if I prescribed for him what he wanted, his chances of dying by overdose, intentionally or unintentionally, would be much increased.

A paper in a recent edition of the British Medical Journal suggests that I was right.

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