Persuasive Essay About Drugs

Many people do not understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. Drug addiction is a complex chronic disease that causes impairment with the mind to express emotion, engage into physical activities and simply being one’s self. In fact, through scientific research, people understand more about how drugs work in the brain more than ever, and they also know that drug addiction can be successfully treated with some help from those who want change in the death rates amongst drug addict Americans. No one will ever truly understand why a person performs such deadly behaviors, but this is their way of crying out for help. It is time to take a stand and help those in need of escape from drugs and

There have been several news coverages on TV and social network about drug overdose of different cases recently and they have risen people’s concern about the problems of drug abuse national-wide. The drug abuse and opioid epidemic is not a new problem to the American society, actually it has been a serious problem for many years. So what is the situation of drug epidemic now, and how can we find effective ways to deal with this problem? A few writers who ponder this question are Nora D. Volkow, Dan Nolan and Chris Amico.

From teenagers to adults, many are suffering with an opioid addiction. The opioid crisis that has struck, has taken a significantly large amount of lives. There were about “...50,000 [ opioid ] overdose deaths...in 2015-roughly equivalent to the number of Americans lost in the Vietnam War”(Price). All these friends and family members are dying because of something that can be controlled and even avoided. Although there are some who believe that the programs that are enacted to help with this sort of addiction are very effective, the truth is they are not as effective as people let on to believe. There should be a more enforced and regulated limit for those with a stronger prescription drug in order to lower the overdose count, over prescription from doctors, and pill shopping.

The United States of America has had a war against drugs since the 37th president, Richard Nixon, declared more crimination on drug abuse in June 1971. From mid-1990s to today, a crisis challenges the health department and government on opioid regulation, as millions of Americans die due overdoses of painkillers. Opioids are substances used as painkillers, and they range from prescription medications to the illegal drug, heroin. Abusing these substances can cause a dependency or addiction, which can lead to overdoses, physical damages, emotional trauma, and death. To ease the crisis, physicians are asked to depend on alternatives to pain management. Law enforcement cracks down on profiting drug-dealers and heroin abusers. People are warned against misusing opioids. The controversy begins for those who suffer from chronic pain, because they depend on opioids. There’s so a correlation to the 1980s cocaine epidemic, and people are upset over racial discrimination. Nonetheless, the best way to avoid this crisis is to recover the people at risk, reduce inappropriate opioid description, and have a proper response.

If you watch the news it should come as no surprise that drug abuse and overdoses have increased dramatically in the United States. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as many as 36 million people abuse opioids throughout the world with 2.1 million in the U.S. who currently suffer from opioid abuse disorders (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2014). These astonishing numbers are only marginalized when comparing them to opioid related deaths in the United States. With an increase of 137 percent since 2000, deaths from drug overdoses now occur 1.5 times more often than deaths from motor vehicle accidents (Rudd Aleshire, Zibbell & Gladden, 2016). The opioid epidemic in the

Here in America, there is an ongoing tragedy ceaselessly unfolding right before our eyes. Beyond the calamities of gun violence, the loss of innocent lives through ruthless crimes and deadly motor vehicle accidents, there is a crisis occurring in the very homes of many Americans. There is a proceeding addiction to the pill bottles hidden behind bathroom mirrors, needles poking through the surface of fragile skin to get a “fix”, and prescriptions being written left and right with the intention to help but the potential to kill. Here in America, over 115 people die every single day from overdosing on opioids and this is a reality that has been nothing short of deadly since as early as 1990.

The systematic scheduling of drugs in the United States is arbitrary which leads to a discriminative social injustice. Some psychedelic substances such as Psilocybin are schedule 1 drugs, while alcohol and nicotine are legal. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) both alcohol and nicotine are proven to be harmful and addictive (2017). Conversely, Psychedelic substances have not been proven to be addictive. This equates to a social injustice that discriminates over someone who may prefer the effects of psilocybin to nicotine, even under the science that has shown nicotine and alcohol have a higher potential for abuse. Unfortunately, many political factors come into play regarding the legal status of drugs and industries such as the pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol industries, who harbor the most money and have an influence in the legality of drugs whether they are safe or not. While legalizing psychedelic substances would most likely cut into profits for these large industries they would bring about economic benefits as well.

The opioid epidemic is a problem of importance to me, with an immense national impact. As an adolescent in Chicago, I am exposed to the horrifying statistics of opioid abuse every day. For example, the CDC reports that 91 Americans die from opioid overdose every day and the number is quickly rising. Also, the amount of Americans have died from the "opioid war" is more than 3 times the U.S Military deaths during the Vietnam War. I have watched the stories of babies born with opioid addiction, teenagers in rural parts of Milwaukee and Ohio dying from overdosing and families being torn apart because of drugs like heroin, Percocet, and opium. There are people who believe that only poor and low-income individuals succumb to opioid addictions because you have to be uneducated to be exposed to drugs. But the truth of the matter is, opioids do not discriminate.

The United States is currently going through an Opioid crisis, with thousands dying every year. This crisis affects public health as well as social and economic welfare, costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year.

In the United States, there has been upward swing of opioid abuse over the past decade. Overdose deaths involving opioids – both prescription pain relievers and heroin – almost quadrupled between 1999 and 2014. Well-intentioned efforts to curb prescription opioid abuse have yielded new policies with unfortunate, unforeseen consequences for the 15% of the US population that suffer from chronic pain – nearly 45 million people.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are focusing on five different things to change this: improving access to treatment and recovery services, promoting use of overdose-reversing drugs, strengthening our understanding of the epidemic through better public health surveillance, providing support for cutting-edge research on pain and addiction, and lastly, advancing better practices for pain management.(National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2018, Opioid Overdose Crisis, P5.). There is no way to completely stop the opioid crisis but if we can make the numbers of people who overdose a year, then we can slowly make a huge change in the world of opioids. If these prescription drugs become more limited to people then they won't have access to buy off the streets or steal

Although some people argue for the legalization of drugs, addiction to these substances has caused a huge increase in violent crimes in the home, at school, and on the street. Many people do not understand why individuals become addicted to drugs or how drugs change the brain to create compulsive drug abuse. They mistakenly view drug abuse and addiction as strictly a social problem and may characterize those who take drugs as morally weak. One very common belief is that drug abusers should be able to just stop taking drugs if they are only willing to change their behavior. This is a false and uneducated belief. Drug abuse may start as a social problem or social escape but one the addiction has taken ahold of a person

Even though people need their prescriptions, the abuse of them is getting out of control and we need to find a way to regulate it better,because it can destroy a family, cause some to become addicted, or even kill them. Prescription drugs are no joke, they can be worse than illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and even heroin. The only difference is a doctor can prescribe these types of drugs. The problem we run into with prescription drugs is there is not enough being done to keep the person from becoming addicted or them selling to others. In 2007 2.5 million Americans abused just painkillers (Drug free world). That is not even including the other two types. Now it is starting to affect teens, one out of every ten teenagers admit to abusing a prescribed drug(Drug-free world).

If you have ever seen the movie The Wolf on Wall Street, there is no doubt you have seen the effects drugs can have. Leonardo DiCaprio portrays a high-strung stock broker reliant on a multitude of illegal drugs to keep up with his hectic life style. His addiction gets so severe that at one point in the movie, he is lying on the floor, unable to move due to the drugs’ effects on his body. Even though the movie is set in the 90’s, a decade infamous for its use of drugs, today, drug usage and abuse has never been more of an issue. According to Alice Park (2016), “More people died of drug overdoses in 2014 in the U.S. than in any other year” (p.49). What people fail to realize is that drug abuse effects more than just the individual that uses them. The loved ones trying to support the user, the community the user is in, can all be affected by drug abuse. In fact, all members of society are affected by the abuse of drugs. In short, no one benefits from drug abuse. In the words of the Nation Institute of Drug Abuse, “Drug abuse is a major public health problem that impacts society on multiple levels. Directly or indirectly, every community is affected by drug abuse and addiction, as is every family. Drugs take a tremendous toll on our society at many levels” ( Magnitude, 2016).

Drug abuse is a major public health issue that impacts society both directly and indirectly; every person, every community is somehow affected by drug abuse and addiction and this economic burden is not exclusive to those who use substance, it inevitably impacts those who don 't. Drugs impact our society in various ways including but not limited to lost earnings, health care expenditures, costs associated with crime, accidents, and deaths. The use of licit or illicit drugs long term, causes millions of deaths and costs billions for medical care and substance abuse rehabilitation and the effects of drug abuse extend beyond users, spilling over into the society at large, imposing increasing