GEAmerican Governments In previous years, people used to really get worried about car crashes, plane crashes, gun violence, and HIV. Nowadays, more people are killed by drug overdoses. According to the national institute on drug abuse, every day, about 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids. The addiction to opioids is a very dangerous and serious national crisis that touch public health as well as social and the quality of living standards in an economy. The question that get asked all the time is “what exactly is the opioid epidemic? Is it about prescription drugs or heroin?” The answer would be that it’s a combination of both problems. Opioids were being recommended to treat chronic pain, but people didn’t realize the problems associated with the usage of opioids in the long term which the most important point would be getting addicted to the medication. When people get hooked up on these medications and can’t get them from their providers anymore, people substitute it with extremely strong and toxic drugs like heroin.
When these companies launched years ago, they announced that these medications won't be addicting to the consumer. This false announcement made doctors prescribe these medications crazily. People start misusing them by not following the prescription instructions which lead to many death cases due to addiction. Opioids overdose rate began to increase. Because prescription opioids are similar to, and act on the same brain systems affected by, heroin and morphine, they present a permanent abuse and an addiction, particularly if they are used for non-medical purposes. The most dangerous part is that people start getting creative by crushing the pills and inhaling them, or taking them via snorting or injecting the powder, or combining the pills with alcohol or other drugs. Also, some people didn’t take them exactly as prescribed (e.g., taking more pills at once, or taking them more frequently or combining them with medications for which they are not being properly controlled); and it is possible for a small number of people to become addicted even when they take them as prescribed. It is estimated that more than 100 million people suffer from chronic pain in this country, and for some of them, opioid therapy may be necessary for their case. So now we have two arguments. Some people believe that these control medications are necessary and should have less regulations on them. The others believe that opioids shouldn’t be prescribed to begin with and can be substituted by non-addicting pain killers. President Trump stated in his first State of the Union speech in 2018 that his administration “is committed to fighting the drug epidemic and helping get treatment for those in need.” Unfortunately, the President hasn’t delivered on his promise to seriously confront the opioid epidemic. Now opioids are the deadliest drug overdose crisis in the US history. A $3 billion dollars was given by the President toward the crisis. This money is primarily for addiction treatment, which remains in short supply in the US. According to the 2016 Surgeon General’s addiction report, only about 10 percent of people with a substance use disorder get specialty treatment — in large part due to a lack of access to care. People argue that the US needed to invest in more money for the crisis so we can narrow that gap and eventually try to get rid of it. President Trump and Congress also passed the Support for Patients and Communities Act, which takes some positive steps to increase access to addiction treatment, scale back the over prescription of opioid painkillers. This act is very important because it helps many people that don’t have access to the addiction treatment center or can’t afford to be in one. Looking at a study that was done in 2017, the east coast seems to have higher rates of death from opioid overdoses; West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma. The opioid prescribing rates in 2012 shows that the east coast have higher rates compared to the rest of the US. Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and more states. Recently, we are seeing a lot of states suing big companies that manufacture the control substances. On March 26, 2019 Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin agreed to pay $270 million to avoid state court trial. On top of that they are funding a national center for opioid addiction and research in Oklahoma City. A total of 1600 law suits were made against that company because of the way they advertised for the medication which was very wrong and misleading. Most presidential candidates aren’t talking much about the opioid epidemic. Elizabeth Warren want to fight the opioid epidemic and put serious resources toward ending the crisis. Some of her ideas are more research toward alternative painkillers. I believe that this crisis needs more attention and work put into it so it can be reduced/ eliminated. With the help of our new presidential candidates, I hope they will shine the light on this epidemic so we can have healthier, happier population.
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AuthorUndergraduate student generated content. Blog posting and updating done by Kristina Flores Victor, Assistant Professor of Political Science at CSUS Archives
March 2020
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