Over the last 30 years a new crisis in America has arisen. This crisis is known as the Opioid Epidemic. On average, around 128 Americans died everyday due to an opioid overdose in 2018. These drugs are highly addictive and dangerous if misused or abused.
Usually, opioids are prescribed to patients with chronic pain as a pain reliever. This is how many opioid addictions are started. Over ten million people have been shown to misuse prescription opioids which leads to a strong dependence on the drug and causes opioid addiction. Because these drugs are dangerous, the misuse and abuse of them leads to overdoses. Around 71,000 deaths each year are caused by opioid overdoses.
Because of the dangers that opioids present, public health officials have started to call for tighter restrictions on the prescription of opioid pain relievers. They also feel that there should be more access to treatment and recovery centers for those who are struggling with opioid abuse. Already, the United States spends over 78 billion dollars on the opioid epidemic. Things that they spend on include, healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment and criminal justice involvement.
Do you think that doctors should continue prescribing these drugs?
What do you think should be done in order to help or prevent this crisis?
Replies
Good topic choice William! While your summary is good it is a tad brief overall. You also replied frequenlty but most were done early this morning.
I think that doctors can prescribe these drugs but they need to make it more restricted to get. These drugs should be given to people with big surgeries afterwords. Some people don't abuse them also if they had a big surgery or is in great great pain. Recently my brother had surgery on his torn ACL and was prescribed opioids like oxycodone which is a really adictive painkiller and he was just fine.
I think that they probably should be able to but only in certain circumstances. I think that if we were to only prescribe them for people with serious medical conditions then it would crack down on it. I think that there is some stuff that can be done but it would be kinda hard because people could fake being sick or something in order to get these.
I agree I think some people who get addicted will say that they aren't doing better so they can get more doses of the drug so it is a very hard desition.
I think that it should be a bit harder for a doctor to prescribe opioids. This crisis started back in the '90s when large medication companies were pushing their products to be prescribed. This lead to a lot of people getting addicted and now some of these companies have to pay large legal settlements for their part in the opioid epidemic.
I think that these drugs should still be given but only in very serious situations. I think that Opioids are way too easy for people to get there hands on. These drugs are highly addictive so I don't think Doctors should give them out so easily. People start to depend on them once they have them, making them even more addicted.
I believe the drug should still be prescribed to some of the patients that need it but they should be checked to see if they have ever been addicted to something else or have some other issue that might lead to this addiction of opiods and other prescribed drugs.
I agree they need to have a background check to make sure they don't have a history with illegal drugs.
I think the doctors should keep prescribing this drug. To help when the problems like addiction there should be more rules or restrictions on them. Decreasing the amount they give them could help the problem. That was it is less likely for someone to become addicted.
I agree decrerasing the dose might prevent many people from getting addicted to the drug.
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