Opioids

The drug you believe is most detrimental

Opioids are some drugs that are used in the relieving of pain and which if not well monitored can cause a person to become an addict of the drugs in due time. They can include the hydrocodone, morphine, oxycodone and many other types which fall under the opioid drugs. The opioid used as pain relievers are very safe when they are taken for shorter time according to the doctor’s prescriptions but since they develop some conditions of euphoria in relation to the pain relief, they are prone to been misused such as being taken anytime without the doctor’s advice and also taken just for fun (Chen et al., 2014). If they are taken very regularly even if the doctor advised on the drug they can be harmful to the users. Incidences of overdose and deaths are the most outcomes of these drugs.

In the case a person has overdosed on the opioids, a drug by the name naloxone can be used to reverse the situation if taken in the right quantity according to recommendations. In the states where the drug abuse level has gown drastically, the addicts have found a simple and healthy way of dealing with the addiction levels. From the year 2007, United States has been facing the challenge of drug abuse and thee has been an increase in the number of people who are dying as a result of the abuse (Nikoo et al., 2016). However, there has been an increased research for the medication availability for these deaths and medicines have been manufactured such as the naltrexone and methadone. These two examples of medicines could assist in making many people recover from the addiction of opioids.

Heroin among many opioids is the most addictive and also an illegal drug in many states. The rug is used by an increased number of millions of people around the United States and in the world. The users are much pressured to use this drug and they are unable to stop the urge to use it daily since most of them have the knowledge that the withdrawal signs of heroin are dangerous and hurting.  Heroin is obtained from the resin of the plants known as the poppy plants. The opium obtained is used in making the morphine and then later made into some forms of heroin. Most of the heroin is used by the drug users through the injection method which is an added risk for the users who can be infected with Aids or any other infectious disease which can contract through sharing needles to inject each other (Rudd et al., 2016). In the early 1850s, the addiction of opium was the biggest problem all over the United States and in Germany. The recommended solution for this problem was to have the addicts given another less non-addictive substance by the name morphine. The substitute, morphine, became another very big problem when it was proved to be more addictive than the opium.

Due to morphine being a very addictive drug compared to the opium, another drug was manufactured to reduce the effects of the drug. The drug that was supposedly manufactured as a non-addictive drug proved to be more addictive than the morphine. The drug was heroin. Heroin became more addictive than all the other drugs supposedly to be nonaddictive. A drug by the name methadone was developed to assist the people with addiction. In the United States, methadone was named dolphins in the 1940s (Chen et al., 2014). Dolophine was widely used to treat those affected by the addiction of heroin. Dolophine also became more addictive than the heroin. In the 90s, heroin addicts had a mortality rate of more than twenty times bigger than the whole population.

Why you believe the drug is most detrimental

Addiction to opioids has increased gradually over the years. This addiction in the world is the worst and at a high level that affects the social, economic and the health welfare of the general society. In the world today, between 27 million and 36 million people abuse the drug with more than 3 million people all around the United States seriously suffering from the disorders of the related drugs which are as a result of the prescriptions in the year 2012. More than 400 000 people are estimated to be addicted to heroin as opioids (Chen et al., 2014). Over the years, the consequences of the drug abuse have been on the rise and the resulting outcomes have been deaths. Those people who are dying from the prescribed drug overdose have increased and still on the rise in the United States. Prescriptions opioid is one of the many categories of the medications that have been prescribed and which present a liability in terms of abuse followed by stimulants and the central nervous system medications. Several factors may have contributed to the opioids being the most abused prescribed drugs in the world today. This is caused by the drastic increase in terms of the number of the prescriptions written and also dispensed.

Aggressive marketing of the drugs by the pharmaceuticals has increased the problem of addiction to the opioids (Nikoo et al., 2016). The above factors and many others have assisted in increasing the environmental availability of the prescription for the drugs and in particular the opioid related drugs. Currently, the death rate of people affected by the overdose from heroin and any other type of opioid is more than 30 000 people annually and this rate has influenced the world to call for a solution to this menace. This kind of epidemic did not take place over one night. Over the past decades, the problem has grown significantly thereby destroying the lives of many people all over the United States regardless of the age, wealth, location or race of the user.

A proposed prevention plan to reduce future use

The epidemic of opioid has affected and devastated millions of people and the community in general in the United States and therefore causing more than 300 000 deaths out of an overdose. The epidemic of opioids never started with the drug related industry wanting to sell huge volumes of drugs or the prescribers recommending recklessly (Kolodny et al., 2015). It all began with the doctors who were compassionate enough to look for a solution to the humans suffering from various complications. Painkillers over the world have been used to reduce the effects of some complications. Such painkillers include the Percocet, Vicodin and many others have caused millions of people to suffer from a drug overdose. Heroin use has drastically increased around the world making it a big issue for the world to deal with the issue with finality.

Opiates were used in large quantities in the 90s but by then they were legal and has made it comfortable for everyone to use them but the government conducted a crackdown which leads to the drug being hard to get (Rudd et al., 2016).  Educating the patients and the physicians on the safe methods of prescribing the opioids can help reduce any addiction levels in the future. Universal precaution of the pain medications needs to be implemented to help reduce any possibilities of having patients affected by the drugs. This methodology will help in making sure that the patients use only the recommended and which have no adverse effects on human life.

Programs which will help in the monitoring the use of the prescribed drugs and the number of pharmaceuticals which have been licensed to deal with prescribing the drugs will assist in ensuring there is control over the use of the drugs. Having the family members and the general society live a healthy and comfortable lifestyle will help improve the state of the affected person’s in the future.  The inappropriate prescription is also very important to consider in order minimizing the use of the opioids. Medical errors, wrong selection of patients, incorrect directions and prescribing the wrong opioids is very important to monitor. Developing algorithms which can be used in the identification of mismatches is also very important (Califf et al., 2016).

Electronically prescribing, use of prescribing officers and direct monitoring will promote safe opioids intake in the future and also increase the accuracy of issuing medical prescriptions to patients in the future. Referring all the patients who have pain issues to specialists who have the capability and the knowledge of prescribing correctly is very important (Kolodny et al., 2015). The addicted patients can be educated and also encouraged with other duties which will help them recover from the addictions is important. Involving the addicts in activities that will help them see the value of not using heroin and any other opioids is crucial in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References       

Califf, R. M., Woodcock, J., & Ostroff, S. (2016). A proactive response to prescription opioid abuse. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(15), 1480-1485.

Chen, L. H., Hedegaard, H., & Warner, M. (2014). Drug-poisoning deaths involving opioid analgesics: United States, 1999-2011. NCHS data brief, (166), 1-8.

Hser, Y. I., Evans, E., Grella, C., Ling, W., & Anglin, D. (2015). Long-term course of opioid addiction. Harvard review of psychiatry, 23(2), 76-89.

Kolodny, A., Courtwright, D. T., Hwang, C. S., Kreiner, P., Eadie, J. L., Clark, T. W., & Alexander, G. C. (2015). The prescription opioid and heroin crisis: a public health approach to an epidemic of addiction. Annual review of public health, 36, 559-574.

Nikoo, M., Nikoo, N., Javid, S., Amiri, A., Vogel, M., Choi, F., ... & Schütz, C. (2016). Tincture of opium for treating opioid dependence: a systematic review of safety and efficacy. Addiction.

Rudd, R. A., Aleshire, N., Zibbell, J. E., & Matthew Gladden, R. (2016). Increases in drug and opioid overdose deaths—United States, 2000–2014. American Journal of Transplantation, 16(4), 1323-1327.