JBAmerican Governments With two hundred thousand cases per year in the U.S., the opioid crisis is at epidemic level and continues to affect the lives of not only overdose victims, but also their people around them. “Opioids are a class of drugs that include illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and pain relievers available legally by prescription, such as Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, codeine, morphine and many others” (National Institute on Drug Abuse, n.d.). Fentanyl is the leading killer of Americans among opioids and more often than not, addiction begins with a prescription. The number of Americans addicted to opioids continues to increase and will continue unless a solution is found. “More than 115 people in America die every day due to accidental misuse or abuse of opioids—that’s one person every 12 minutes” (National Institute on Drug Abuse, n.d.), so at a minimum, there are 41,975 deaths a year due to the opioid epidemic in America.
An interesting question about this epidemic is how did it begin? In the 1990’s a large amount of pharmaceutical companies were marketing for their new opioid pills. A few of which promoted their pills as non-addictive, such as OxyContin. What these companies didn’t market was the fast that their drugs were chemically similar to heroin, which is one of the most addictive substances on Earth. “And during that 1999-2016 timeframe, overdose deaths from heroin increased 7 times. And deaths from synthetic opioids like Fentanyl increased almost 21 times” (National Institute on Drug Abuse, n.d.). These drugs have steadily been affecting the country in higher and higher rates each year as is spreads from the Midwest to now the east stated Mathew Kiang, ScD, of the Stanford University School of Medicine. “Eight states—Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, and Ohio – had opioid-related mortality rates that at least doubled every 3 years” and “Florida and Pennsylvania – had opioid-related mortality rates that at least doubled every 2 years”; the mortality rates in the east are mostly caused by synthetic opioids like Fentanyl (George, 2019). In the last midterm election 58 bills were passed by law makers which added new funding to treatment and more payment options for addicts. Love him or hate him, president Donald Trump helped fight the epidemic by signing a package of bills nick named the Support for Patients and Communities Act. “The Support for Patients and Communities Act is a big breakthrough that will boost access to addiction treatment and many other interventions to mitigate the opioid epidemic, from law enforcement efforts against illicit drugs to combating the over prescription of opioids” (Lopez, 2018). “Importantly, this bill will increase access to long-term treatment and recovery while also helping the flow of deadly synthetic drugs like fentanyl from being shipped into the Unites States throughout own Postal Service” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) after the Senate vote. Many of the bills will make a difference in prevention of addiction, limiting illegal opioid distribution and rehabilitation. In the fight for prevention, one bill gives seniors more education on the different options they have when it comes to prescriptions so that they can be informed about the opiate and no-opiate painkiller options they have. To fight illegal distribution, another bill gives more power to the Postal Service in an effort to prevent drug trafficking through international mail. For rehabilitation, another bill added new recovery centers and treatment programs but aside from bills, congress also directed the National Institute of Health to develop new non-addictive painkilling drugs to prescribe to people instead of prescribed opiates. Congress even passed a bill that “would put a patient’s addiction history on their medical records” which it’s authors argue that “it will prevent relapses by giving doctors more information about their patient’s history” (Carberry, n.d.). Some other significant things that the Support for Patients and Communities Act does are it “lifts restrictions on medications for opioid addiction, allowing more types of health care practitioners to prescribe the drugs, expands an existing program that attempts to get more first responders, such as police and firefighters, to carry and use naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid overdoses, allows federal agencies to pursue more research projects related to addiction and pain, attempts to improve coordination between different federal agencies to stop illicit drugs like fentanyl at the border, and increases penalties for drug manufacturers and distributor related to the overprescribing of opioids”. However, though these are positive bills in the fight against the opioid epidemic, the government is not actually providing “a significant increase in spending at all. Even though it authorizes some relatively small grant programs, the actual funding for those will be decided later on by congress’s appropriation process” (Lopez, 2018). Without a doubt, the opioid epidemic will certainly be a big topic in the 2020 election.
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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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