Kern DM, Cepeda MS, PhD, et al. - Sequential cross-sectional data of opioid prescribing practices in patients with no prior history of opioid use were retrospectively analyzed. From four different administrative claims databases (IBM MarketScan Commercial Database, Multi-State Medicaid Database [MDCD], Medicare Supplemental Database, and Optum De-Identified Clinformatics Data Mart Database), they identified 40,600,696 new opioid users for the period between January 1, 2002 and December 31, 2018. During this study period, the incidence of new opioid use ranged from 6% to 11% within the two commercially insured databases. Observations overall indicated variable opioid prescribing practices across different populations of insured individuals during the past 17 years. MDCD exhibited the most substantial changes in opioid prescriptions over time, with reductions in use across multiple metrics.