Speech On Painkillers

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.

Today, we are launching a campaign called Against the Opioids. I am seeking your help, because the addicts of our community are not seeking help. We want to put an end to opioid crises, and to do this, we need everyone to be mindful of the problem at hand. This is the first campaign about opioids at the UN. We want to try to educate as many people as possible to become advocates for change in our community. And, we don’t just want to learn about it thentake no action. We want to make sure that a change is seen.

Opioids, otherwise known as prescription pain medication, are used to treat acute and chronic pain. They are the most powerful pain relievers known. When taken as directed they can be safe and effective at managing pain, however, opioids can be highly addictive. Ease of access helps people get pain medications through their physician or by having friends and family get the medication for them. With their ease of access and being highly addictive the use and misuse of opioids have become a growing epidemic. Patients should be well educated on the affects opioid use can have. More importantly instead of the use of opioids, physicians should look into alternative solutions for pain management. While pain medication is helpful with chronic pain, it is also highly addictive, doctors should be more stringent to whom and how often they prescribe pain medication.

Vivek Murthy, a U.S. Surgeon General, said he wanted to change the way Doctors have been taught to handle pain management for the last twenty to thirty years (824). The reason Murthy wants to do this is because while he was reading a training document for nurses and doctors it claimed , "If your patient is concerned that they may develop dependence on opioids, you can safely reassure them that addiction to opioids is very rare in patients who have pain" (823). This document also reassured doctors they could prescribe opioids as a long-term treatment. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention advises doctors that pain-relieving effects may wear off for long-term users(824). This explains how opioids can be used to deal with pain management, but if used as a long-term treatment it can create an

First Main Point: Last month president Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency (Merica, 2017). This goes to show that the opioid problem is a huge deal in the United States and it should be treated so.

"If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution - then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise."

Have you ever thought about doing drugs? If so you're not the first, but you probably didn't think about how it could affect you and your life. In 2016 63,600 people didn’t think of the consequences and ended up dying from overdosing in the United States. 42,249 deaths involved an opioid. Opioids are drugs made to replicate opium. They both include legal painkillers like morphine, oxycodone, or hydrocodone prescribed by doctors. The problem with opioids has been growing for years and its growing with each year. The misuse of and addiction of opioids is a serious national crisis. It effects public health as well as social and economic welfare.

Opioid pain medicines are strong medicines that are used to treat serious pain. Only take these medicines while you are working with a doctor. You should only take them for short amounts of time.

Weeks before my 12th birthday, I went to an emergency center thinking that I had an ear infection. Sitting in a hospital bed, I recall panicking, as I realized I could not move my legs. 2 years and a vast multitude of tests later, doctors were able to determine that I have an autonomic nervous system condition called Dysautonomia. Now, at 19 years of age, my doctor has just signed the paperwork so that I can become a medical marijuana card holder. After years of dealing with the dilemma that is prescription opioids, I have found myself opting for medical marijuana instead, and for good reason. Without a doubt, medical marijuana is a better alternative to prescription opioids in terms of overdoses, negative side effects, and psychoactive properties.

In this discussion, I will be looking at the different forms of pain and how this pain is caused within the body. The number of different types of drugs used to treat pain is forever expanding but I will examine the main types of painkiller, how they were discovered and how they work to relieve the symptoms of pain.

Opioid addiction is so prevalent in the healthcare system because of the countless number of hospital patients being treated for chronic pain. While opioid analgesics have beneficial painkilling properties, they also yield detrimental dependence and addiction. There is a legitimate need for the health care system to provide powerful medications because prolonged pain limits activities of daily living, work productivity, quality of life, etc. (Taylor, 2015). Patients need to receive appropriate pain treatment, however, opioids need to be prescribed after careful consideration of the benefits and risks.

While our major access to these drugs is doctors, we cannot simply lay blame on them, as there is not enough knowledge about these treatments to correctly appropriate drugs, and therefore extra is given (Hemphill 373). Alexander of the Department of Epidemiology of the Journal of the American Medical Association, states that “There are serious gaps in the knowledge base regarding opioid use for other chronic nonmalignant pain” (Alexander 1865-1866), which leads to the unfortunately large number of leftover drugs. In fact, the main place that people get their drugs are from leftover prescriptions (Hemphill 373).

In America, the use of opioids is at an all time high, it has became such an issue nationwide, that it has became an epidemic. Because of the opioid epidemic, America is tearing apart, children all across the country are dying everyday, these children are dying from overdoses due to poisoning. The opioid problem is not just because of a person's decision to pick up a needle or a pill bottle, but it is because in the 1990’s doctors gave up on trying to treat patients for their overwhelming pain and discomfort, causing opioids to become over prescribed. Due to the carelessness of America, opioids are being distributed more and more everyday, causing the skyrocketing number of deaths.

Tibetan medicine practices the belief that methods must be practiced as equally as they are learned academically. Misinterpretations of certain Buddhist aspects of Eastern medicine create difficulties in relating Eastern and Western principles. Some Westerners feel that all you need to practice medicine in the East is a strong sense of compassion to help people, without having any real knowledge of the medical practices: “A few weekend courses and all the good intentions in the world it would seem is all that is thought to be necessary.” (Dummer p. 11). This, however, is not the case at all. Eastern practitioners spend years learning medical procedures and techniques before going into practice. They are also fully educated in the spiritual aspects of medicine as well, as for religion plays a significant role in Eastern practices. Inadequate training may result in improper care and detrimental diagnosis to those who may be seriously ill or suffering from undiagnosed diseases.7

Doctors don’t exactly know how many people are addicted to pain medication, but one of the reasons so many people are is the availability.