Drug Essay : Prescription Drug Addiction

With access to prescription drugs, people are able to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses. These drugs help deal with pain, inability to sleep, depression, and much more. Every day we are increasingly living in a world where there is better living through chemicals. However, what most do not seem to see is the rising tide of pain, illness, and ultimately death being caused by the pills people take every day. Most keep drugs in a special place in their minds, where they see them as harmless. Sadly, this is not the case, and in some cases our prescription drugs can be just as harmful as illegal drugs (King 68).

Years ago, the common image of an adolescent drug abuser was a teen trying to escape from reality on illegal substances like cocaine, heroin, or marijuana. Today, there is a great discrepancy between that perception and the reality of who is likely to abuse drugs. A teenage drug abuser might not have to look any further than his or her parent’s medicine chest to ‘score.’ Prescription drug abuse by teens is on the rise. Also, teens are looking to prescription drugs to fulfill different needs other than to feel good or escape the pressures of adulthood. Teens may be just as likely to resort to drugs with ‘speedy’ side effects, like Ritalin to help them study longer, as they are to use prescription

The history story of drugs laws can dated back to the very existent of America. The state of Massachusetts was the first to limit the availability of alcohol. Indians could not purchase alcohol. During the late 1800’s, 13 states passed laws forbidden the sell and use of alcohol. Yes, alcohol is considered a drug. The Tea Importation Act was passed in 1897. The 18th amendment which was ratified on December 5, 1933 by the 21st amendment, which prohibited the making, selling, or transporting of alcohol in anyway a crime. It was meant to protect the consumers. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century did the government take serious the sell and use of drugs in the United States. There were many acts passed to help curtail some of the misuse of

The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such.

Prescription drug abuse has become an epidemic in the United States especially among the youth of our country. The Partnership for a Drug Free America says that 2,500 teens a day abuse prescription drugs. Abuse of these narcotics can lead to serious mental and physical consequences. Why is this such a problem, what can we do to solve it, and how is it affecting our social lives?

Most people are familiar with prescription medications; almost everyone has taken them at one point or another during their lifetime. Not all prescription drugs are addicting, but a large number of them are. Prescription drug abuse is a disease that has become a major problem in the United States, which affects over six-million Americans. Prescription drug abuse not only affects the individual, but can additionally have far-reaching consequences that affect family, personal health, employment, communities and society as a whole. Research has shown that at least 10% of people prescribed an addictive medication will become dependent on the medicine. Due to prescription drug abuse, states are beginning to monitor doctors who prescribe certain medications, more closely, which may scare some physicians away from prescribing helpful medications to people who truly need them.

Why is it that prescription drug abuse is increasing at a high rate? The answer to this question can be somewhat complex. There are multiple reasons as to why this is happening, but the reasons all come together and create a laddering effect. Prescription drug abuse is currently at an all-time high because prescription drugs are so easy for a person to obtain. The chain reaction starts at the doctor over-prescribing medications then continues to consumers becoming what I would call drug dealers and ending with and addict or in more often than not death.

Medical professionals should further their understanding of addiction; therefore, the medical professional can help further a patient’s knowledge on how serious prescription drugs can be.

Parents enable drug abuse without realizing it. When adolescents use cocaine, heroin, marijuana, LSD, and other illicit drugs, it captures a parent’s attention. However, a problem more prevalent than the use of these illicit drugs, and hits closer to home is nonmedical use of prescription drugs (NMUPD). NUMPD occurs when a person without a prescription gains access to a prescription drug and uses it simply for the experience, or for the feeling the drug causes. Therefore the drugs in question end up being used for nonmedical purposes in a manner in which it was never intended. Opioids, used to treat pain, are the prescription drugs that youth are most likely to misuse. These are commonly used because they are available in medicine cabinets

(Herzberg 106.3: 408-10). This has become the norm. People take prescription drugs; lifestyle change is far more difficult than popping a pill. Direct to consumer advertising of prescription medication undermines a physicians authority. They went to medical school and passed rigorous testing to become a physician, prescription drug advertising is an insult to physicians. A physician takes an oath, “To do no harm”. They are compromised with the current advertising conundrum, knowing that if a patient does not get the prescription they want from them, they will simply seek another doctor. Drug seekers exist, and without prescription drug advertising they would still exist. Yet the United States is creating new drug seekers by allowing prescription

Prescription drug addiction is a global epidemic. Prescription drugs claim the 3rd most frequently abused category of drugs, behind alcohol and marijuana but ahead of the harder drugs, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Overall, an estimated 48 million people have abused prescription drugs, representing nearly 20% of the U.S. population (NCADD.gov, 2015).

Addiction starts with abuse. Prescription drug abuse is the use of prescription medication in a way not intended by the prescribing doctor, in such as the feelings one gets from the drug (“Prescription Drug Abuse”). The use of prescription drugs goes back 100 of years to when Laudanum, and mixture of opium and alcohol was abused. That drug was an remedy for pain, anxiety, coughing and Diarrhea. In the 1800’s that specific drug was used by doctors. The usual addict of Laudanum was caucasian women. Men had their addicts too but they were addicted to alcohol. Women weren’t able to go to saloons, bars, or be seen drinking so they would go to doctors for the addicted medicine. But, they got them for pregnancy problems, childbirth, menstrual cramps, and or, emotional

Prescription drugs have been proven to be much worse than marijuana. The fuss people make over the legalization of marijuana does not make sense when one thinks about the effects that overdosed or misused prescription drugs has had. Overdosed prescription drugs kill around 47,055 people a year, and overdosed prescription drugs have no death record. The health effects of overdosed prescriptions are much worse when compared to overdosed prescription drugs. Also, the dangers of prescription drugs are portrayed as often and as correct as the dangers of marijuana.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy calls prescription drug abuse “the Nation’s fastest growing drug problem.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified prescription drug abuse as a growing national epidemic. Prescription drug abuse is the Nation’s fastest-growing drug problem. While there has been a marked decrease in the use of some illegal drugs like cocaine, data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show that nearly one-third of people aged 12 and over used drugs for the first time began by using a prescription drug non-medically. (1)

There is no one “best” definition of addiction. The American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Society of Addiction Medicine, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse define addiction in somewhat different ways, although their definitions do not differ significantly.