Cassie Rodgers
Miranda
PS 202 Paper 1
The Opioid Crisis: What Politicians are doing
The problem with opioid abuse and misuse has been around for over a century. Opioids were first introduced to medicine in the 1800’s and the first form of prescribed morphine was given in the 1850’s (Cobaugh et al… 1540). “Opioid” refers to all compounds that bind to opioid receptors while “opium” refers to a mixture of alkaloids from the poppy seed, and the word ‘opiate’ from the naturally occurring alkaloids. Ingestion of opioids effects receptors in and out of the central nervous system, controlling or managing acute and chronic pain. Opioids like morphine are widely used in hospitals, and prescribed by doctors for many different reasons. While opioid medications are useful to many who are diagnosed with cancer, or have other chronic pain, prescribed medications are being abused by ex-hospital patients or people on the streets.
Prescribed opioid users are categorized in different ways, some are more tolerant, or naive-addicted, while others are non-addictive, or a low to high risk level (Dineen 64). These different patients include those with a history of prescription abuse, the pain level they have, and the reasons behind their pain. Some of these reasons include cancer. In that case, “cancerous pain is treated more seriously than acute pain” (Cobaugh 1541). As cancer is a long term illness, opioids have been used long term for many people. Long term use of opioids lead to many problems sweeping the nation today. Opioid abuse can cause higher rate of depression, hyperalgesia and psychological dependence. Doctors and pharmacists should be cautious when prescribing these drugs for a short amount of time due to the possibility that addiction can be started after being prescribed.
Misuse of prescription opioids is a major problem. Many ex-hospital patients and other opioid users are misusing the drugs they are given. According to the Center for Disease Control or the CDC, the Drug Abuse Warning Network, and the National poison system “Reports have demonstrated an alarming increase in opioid misuse and abuse over the last two decades” (Cobaugh 1543). This is a nationwide problem that is becoming more and more apparent. Opioid abuse has become so common that many first responders are beginning to carry a drug called Naloxone, which reverses the effects of opioid overdose (Cobaugh 1546). Drug misuse is something that the government has touched on since the 1980’s, but not a lot has changed in recent news.
Various government agencies have worked extremely hard to make sure opioid drugs are used safely and prescribed for the right reasons. The FDA is responsible for regulating the safety and effectiveness of drugs in the US as well as approving the labels, warnings, and changing the drugs. The most major thing the FDA has done recently is “requested a labeling change for oxycodone products to remove the indication for moderate pain, leaving the only indication as severe pain” (Dineen 53). If the label change was allowed, it would force prescribers to find alternatives for moderate pain, and change the current moderate pain level patients prescriptions. The FDA has also launched various risk programs to attempt to solve the problems caused by opioid abuse. For example family physicians refusing to prescribe opioids due to the fact it takes more training and safety measures.
Along with the FDA, the Drug enforcement administration, or DEA has come up with its own set of consequences for the providers if they are caught abusing prescribing opioids. If a pharmacy has been caught abusing giving patients opioids or if a wholesaler was caught over providing and endangering the health of the public by selling excessive quantities, they would be immediately suspended” (Cobaugh 1547). The DEA worked with the FDA to crack down on impatient use of opioids, although it was “less of a problem in the hospital environment than in the retail sector” (Cobaugh 1548). It has been said that opioid addiction begins in a hospital environment before spilling into the patient's home life. The FDA and DEA are two companies major state and federal officials are working with to stop the misuse of opioid drugs.
On the national level, various levels of government are working on the nationwide opioid crisis.. The government takes information through the nature of the problem, collecting “contextual data or background information,to see how it compares to the other concerns in our personal lives or in society” (Kraft 150). Drug abuse is becoming an expensive problem to society with an estimated 55 billion dollars being sent including health care, criminal justice, and workplace productivity costs. (Hoback 9). This is a major portion of the problem, not only does opioid abuse affect the user it affects those around them According to state legislators, “this is not a normal procedure nor is it partisan policy, this is a life or death situation” (Hoback 9). Misuse of prescription painkillers has been around for years, and not much has been done to change it.
Nancy Reagan introduced the “Just Say No” club in 1986 to urge teens to resist and say no when offered drugs (Bennett). This is being carried out today by the current presidential administration. The Trump administration has worked on legal aspects of the emergency and added an extra 500 Million dollars to help fight the crisis. The money the government is spending is going towards researching less harmful pain medications and education of providers and users. Hopefully we begin to see a decrease in opioid misuse in 2018 and it continues to drop as the years go on.
There are many possible solutions to fixing the opioid crisis. The first one is repealing the intractable pain treatment acts like the one in Tennessee. This act “gave those with chronic pain long term access to opioids and continued authority for the state to discriminate and punish providers” (Dineen 56). This harmful Tennessee law caused lots of harm to not only the user but society as well. Other solutions involve monitoring prescription drugs and screening for them, the Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs have holes in them according to many sources, if they were reevaluated they could prevent a lot of misuse of drugs. Possibly the most important thing to prevent or solve drug misuse is education, If youth, users and providers were educated of the possible dangers of using, abusing and overprescribing drugs there would be less cases overall. It is a collective effort with law enforcement, pharmacies, and the public to ensure the health of the nation.
In my opinion, abuse and misuse of opioid drugs are becoming a major national crisis. I have seen too much on the news recently to believe anything is being done to stop this from spreading into neighborhoods around our local community and around the country. Pharmacists need to be well educated on the warning signs of abuse and know how to report it. Other things that could be done are more treatment programs for those who have struggled with drug abuse. Overall there are many steps that need to be done in order to solve the problem of opioid abuse.
Works Cited
Bennett, Kate. "Melania Trump Hosts Opioid Abuse Roundtable." CNN. Cable News Network,
29 Sept. 2017. Web.
Cobaugh, Daniel J., et al. "The opioid abuse and misuse epidemic: implications for pharmacists
in hospitals and health systems." American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, vol. 71,
no. 18, 2014, p. 1539+. Academic OneFile,
Dineen, Kelly K. "Addressing prescription opioid abuse concerns in context: synchronizing
policy solutions to multiple complex public health problems." Law and
Psychology Review, Annual 2016, p. 47+. Academic OneFile,
Kraft, Michael E., and Scott R. Furlong. Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives. N.p.:
CQ, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, 2018. Print.