Dreamland, by Sam Quinones, focused on the opiate epidemic that has been flourishing within America. Similarly, the documentary, Heroin Cape Cod, USA focused on the widespread abuse of Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycodone that has led the U.S. into the rise of an opiate addiction today. Both of these sources not only focused on the operations behind the administration of opiates like heroin, but also the factors driving the epidemic in the U.S. A driving factor of the opiate epidemic both emphasized in Dreamland and Heroin Cape Cod, USA was the over prescription of opiates, leading to what is known as “pill mills.” It is important to stop and to reflect on the statistic that 80% of heroin users start with prescription pills.…
All of these drugs are highly addictive drugs. For instance, Purdue Pharma promoted OxyContin as a painkiller with no possibility of addiction, which was surely incorrect. Pharmaceutical companies called these drugs non-addictive and pushed doctors to prescribe it in high dosages and for more and more conditions. The pharmaceutical companies deliberately feed into the addiction epidemic all for profit. Pharmaceutical companies have a great effect on doctors.…
The documentary Chasing Heroin, searches for answers as to why addiction has escalated over the years. It is believed to have been started by the distribution of Oxycontin (Oxycodone). It began innocently enough, prescribing pain medication to the most seriously ill patients, those afflicted with cancer or AIDS. Doctors were reluctant to prescribe opiates for fear of the implications of an addiction. A company called Pharma Purdue wanted to expand the distribution of pain medication by promoting a new drug, one without the…
The article "The Role of Traumatic Event History in Non-medical Use of Prescription Drugs among a Nationally Representative Sample of U.S. Adolescents" hopes to address the problem of non-medical use of prescription drugs among teens and reduce risk. The purpose of the study was to identify risk factors to aid prevention of NMUPD in adolescents. In particular, the study seeks to use previous demographic and other substance use risk factors that correlate with lifetime non-medical prescription drug abuse in teens. The survey added to this by trying to see if mental health and a history of trauma could also be risk factors associated with NMUPD in teens (McCauley et al., 2009). The conclusion of the telephone survey in this study showed that…
My name is Megan Johnston and I am a registered nurse at a local hospital with nine years of critical care experience. During my career at the bedside, I have watched numerous parents, children, and other family members have to make the difficult decision to take their loved one off of life support and watch them die after an opioid drug overdose. To watch how devastating this is for patients and their loved ones is both heart wrenching and disturbing to me as a healthcare professional. The opioid crisis began to spiral in the 1990s when pharmaceutical companies told providers and prescribers that patients would not likely become addicted to opioid pain relievers, and therefore they were prescribed more frequently, which subsequently led to…
What Caused the Opioid Epidemic? Would you be surprised if I told you that the United States had 50% more people die last year due to a drug epidemic than in car accidents? I heard this on a news podcast and was shocked to find this statistic to be true. This drug crisis is the opioid epidemic we are currently facing in our country that last year alone claimed 60,000 lives. This prompted me to ask, why are we having this epidemic?…
Addiction is a cause of misuse and abuse. When hooked on opioids, the “addiction causes the brain to produce a below-normal level of dopamine; thus, opioids are needed by addicts not to attain a state of euphoria, but rather to achieve a normal level of dopamine” (Adamec). This means that when someone is addicted to opioids, they don’t feel as happy as they did when they weren’t addicted, and they need opioids to reach that normal level of dopamine. This leads to people with addictions misusing the drugs and constantly trying to get more of the opioids, whether its from their doctor or from an illegal source. Another cause of abuse is the overprescription of the drug.…
The new wonder drug founded in Germany was called heroin after its German trademarked name. Heroin was imported into the United States, shortly after its invention. It was said that heroin was a “safe, non-addictive” substitute for morphine. Since this, heroin has always been a part of the American drug addiction problem. It has occasional spark ups, but the modern day epidemic has the potential to be America’s largest heroin epidemic…
Drug addiction dates back centuries, but the crisis we are now facing started in the 1980’s when doctors loosely prescribed opiates for pain management. With opiates being so readily available and marketing companies promoting prescription drugs, it made drugs like OxyContin easy to get. Consequently people were becoming addicted to the drugs, and what started with prescription…
The drug was first introduced in the US in 1947 and was advertised as a ‘pain-relieving medicine’ that could be used to treat a variety of conditions, this soon lead to people believing that the drug was used to treat narcotic addiction. However, the dramatic increase and spread of diseases from these addicts meant that Researchers at the Rockefeller Foundation had to “develop a system of dosing heroin addicts with methadone to prevent their use of heroin. ”[4] Therefore, once these addicts stop relying on taking heroin they would stop committing crimes to get the money to afford the drug.…
According to the “Opioid Crisis” article, the current crisis began with the over-prescription of painkillers, between 1991 and 2011 prescriptions nearly tripled, “by 2016, “only” 215 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed” (Rothstein). As prescriptions increased, so did potency. This made them even more addicting. In addition, “The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 91.5 million Americans are taking opioids” (Rothstein). This large scale of prescriptions has now taken its toll on America, out of millions of people, the risk of addiction, overdose, and Death is higher than ever.…
The opioid epidemic has been an issue that the United States has struggled with since the early 1900’s. Opioids are drugs commonly used in medical practice to relieve pain. Before the knowledge we have currently on opioids, opioids were an essential in curing a range of symptoms; from relieving pain to being used as cough suppressants. Today, the war on opioids is at an all time high. In 2014, 14 thousand people died from an opioid overdose.…
According to the C.D.C in an article by the New York Times from 2012 to 2013 heroin-related deaths jumped 39%. This article also says that from 2002 to 2013 the rate of heroin-related overdose deaths nearly quadrupled. Prescription opiates cause a lot of people to turn to heroin. The C.D.C reported that people addicted to prescription opioids are 40 times more likely to become addicted to heroin. The New York Times states that 75% of heroin addicts started out using prescription opioids.…
In 2013 25,000 people died from an overdose of prescribed medicine out of that 25,000 18,000 them died from prescribed opioids. If those people were not prescribed the opioids then they probably wouldn’t have died cutting down that number to only 7,000 deaths. The higher the dose of opioid drug leads to more overdoses. The longer you take the drug the stronger the tolerance becomes and then the higher the dose of the drug the higher the chance of having an overdose. That’s why the common age that people overdose on opioids is from the age 25-64.…
Opioid abuse can lead to severe overdose and death. Opioids are highly addictive due to its use as a pain reliever while also depressing emotions. Increased abuse of prescription opioids has correlated to an increase in the use of harder street drugs in areas that you wouldn’t except. Heroin use is among one of the most prevalent of these, “Heroin-related deaths increased 439% from 1999 to 2014” (Christensen, Hernandez).…