Assignment 16 (assignment)- Lauren Chatfield

The Opioid Crisis

1,404 Kentuckians died as a result of opioid abuse last year. That’s around 4 lives lost everyday in our state alone. Our nation, our state, and our community are faced with an epidemic that has gotten worse and we have lost control of it. In Lexington, Interstate-64 and -75 meet, making it the ideal place for the dealing of heroin and other opiods for sale across the country. Due to the mass amount of this drug that comes in and out of our city each year, more and more people become exposed to it and 23% of users develop life-long and often fatal addiction. These number are growing every year. Professionals all across the country are doing all that they can to end this, yet this epidemic is still expanding across our nation. With this growth and 2.1 million people affected in the United States, what can we and what will we do as a nation to end this?

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, heroin, synthetic heroines, and prescription pain killers including oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, and morphine are all considered opioids. These are known to be the deadliest of drugs and the most addictive, yet they are so easy to access. Roughly 21-29% of patients prescribed opioid painkillers abuse them adn 4-6% of misusers will eventually develop a heroin addiction. These pills are the prescriptions patients are written for even the most basic pains like back or tooth aches. While in small doses they drugs are highly effective and useful to patients, they can so quickly become deadly. The high from heroin misuse can last from 45 seconds to 10-20 minute rushes, according to Heroin.net, a service for helping with treatment of heroin. These rushes alleviate anxiety and provide relief from pain. However, following these rushes, one experiences severe itches, nausea, dry mouth, and hot flashes. The last phase of a high includes thoughts getting cloudy, confusion, and an irregular heartbeat. It is the last stage that is the most life threatening and often induces comas or death.

Nationwide, medical professionals are frantically trying to find out why there is such an increase and what we can do to fix it. While trying to find solutions to why this could be happening, professionals have turned to young people. Where is the nation lacking so significantly that at age 12 many kids start abusing drugs? According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 90% of all addictions start in adolescence. When the United States Department of Health and Human services interviewed teens on the top 12 reasons why adolescents use prescriptions drugs, 51% agreed the abuse is due to the fact that they are not illegal, 35% agreed with them being safer to use that illegal drugs, and 61% agreed that abuse is due to easy access.

One proposed reason for the crisis is that doctors are failing to prescribe opioids in appropriate doses. Doctors have the liberty to decide what drugs and treatments are best for their patients to treat or cure their symptoms. Often times, when a patient is recovering from surgery or chronic pain, opioids are the best treatment. As patients, we always believe our doctors have our best interests in mind when prescribing us drugs and while this may be true, over prescription has grown too common in our nation. When I got my wisdom teeth removed, I was given almost two weeks worth of pain-killers and I only used two days. Typically, this is the case with prescription drugs -- the patient only needs and uses a few days and is left with plenty of leftover drugs that sit in a medicine cabinet. All it takes is the wrong person coming across those pills for an addiction and possibly a death to occur. In 2016, “66.5  prescriptions per every 100 persons were pain killers” according to the center for disease control and prevention. With a steady increase since 1999 in the prescription of painkillers and the increase in pharmacies filling opioid prescriptions, these drugs have become extremely easy for anyone who wants them to obtain them. This is not entirely the doctors fault. As a society we have placed a lot of pressure on the shoulders of our doctors and we expect to have easy, fast, and painless treatment. Doctors strive to satisfy their patients and want to make treatment ideal however this pressure often does lead to over prescription.

Throughout my schooling years, I’ve had very few conversations and lessons from teachers on the dangers of prescriptions drugs. Of course students are told not to do drugs and that drugs will kill you but it’s only been in my out-of-class environment that I have learned how harmful these drugs really are. While I am fortunate enough to have family and friends that invest time in educating me about hard drugs, not everyone has that and this is where people fall vulnerable to addiction, even in our own school. As a nation we have failed to educate not only our youth but our entire population on the harms of hard drugs, particularly heroine and other opioids. With over 50% of high schoolers believing opioids are safer than illegal drugs, we are failing as a nation to educate our young people.

While nationwide, opioid abuse has been considered a crisis and an epidemic numbers of abuse are increasing. What can we do? My solution proposes two things. First, legislature for school to educate students on what opiods are and that they are among the deadliest of drugs. If we can combat the 90% of abusers that start as teenagers, we can significantly decrease the amount of addictions, particularly those that lead to deaths, in our country. In addition to this, legislation should be implemented to manage the prescription of painkillers by doctors and surgeons. While most doctors and surgeons always have the best interests of their patients in mind when writing prescriptions, there is still an excess of painkillers. Ideally, there should be a minimal cap on how many opiods can be prescribed for a procedure and a patient must see their doctor before receiving more.

In conclusion, our nation is facing a crisis and while so many talented people from multiple professional fields are working together to figure out why this is happening and why it is happening now, it is increasingly important that we educate our public and we encourage legislation to be passed. In order to keep our nation safe, it is the duty of all Americans to learn and try to prevent addiction and drug abuse.

Work Cited

“2016 Overdose and Fatality Report.” Overdose and Fatality Report, 2017.

Abuse, National Institute on Drug. “Heroin.” NIDA, www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/heroin.

Botticelli, Michael. “Addiction Is a Disease. We Should Treat It like One.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, www.ted.com/talks/michael_botticelli_addiction_is_a_disease_we_should_treat_it_like_one.

“CareForward Health.” What Does Heroin Do to the Body?, heroin.net/heroin-effects/heroin-effects-sub-page-1/heroin-effects-on-the-body/.

“Opioid Overdose.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 31 July 2017, www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/maps/rxrate-maps.html.

Peltz, Perri, director. Warning: This Drug May Kill You. HBO.

Secretary, HHS Office of the, and Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA). “About the Epidemic.” HHS.gov, US Department of Health and Human Services, 31 Oct. 2017, www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html.