Opioids have been used for a long time as painkillers in the United States of America health facilities. However, recent scientific research shows that opioids are very addictive and can cause brain problems if unused as prescribed. It exists either naturally in codeine, morphine, opium, and heroin, or synthetic and semi-synthetic forms such as butorphanol, fentanyl, methadone, hydrocodone, oxycodone, and oxymorphone among others. A high number of opioid overdose and general abuse is rampant among college students in the United States of America.
According to Dart et al. (2015), various elements that have led to the rise of opioid use that includes: first, addictions among individual students. This has led to compulsory dependence and abuse of opioid drugs. Second, the difference in socioeconomic statuses such as income and education level has influenced opioid abuse. Students from whose families have a high income are so much affected than their counterparts from humble families. In particular, the whites are highly affected by the drug than blacks and Hispanics.
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Third, the regional component has also influenced opioid abuse with Southeastern, the North West, and Appalachian college students leading in opioid abuse. Students from rural areas also have higher drug overdose than their fellows from urban areas. Next, the society in which students come from has made opioid acceptable and part of medication, hence easing accessibility, consumption, and even creating awareness through marketing.
Again, some families put students under unbearable life conditions thus making them develop stress, emotions, or other forms of pain. This, in turn, influences students to overdose the drug to cope up with the harsh situation. Female students affected more by the psychological distress and overdose opioid as a result. Moreover, the chronic pain problem has significantly contributed to its overdose as well as the government’s failure to formulate legislation that can guide on drug use.
Selected Theoretically-Based Interventions to Reduce Opioid Abuse
The System Approach Need
This approach depends majorly on the jurisdictional systems level in opioid distribution without interest intervention. Through random student interviews conducted across the college, the findings show complications of opioid misuse dynamics due to diverse market and the flooded illegal opioids. Further research shows a positive test to opioid elements in the blood which do not necessarily mean abuse. The research finding also reveals a lack of co-operation among health and government agencies. This strategy aims at reducing addiction and mortality rates among college students. It also seeks to create a formal quantitative model that can table data infrastructure concerning illicit opioid distribution and use. System approach need strategy further aims at categorizing various ways in preventing the opioid epidemic among college students. These ways include reducing the opioid availability or supply, minimizing demand, and finally, reducing the harmful consequences of the drug.
Restricting Supply Strategy
This approach gives the healthcare providers full power to implement the regulations of opioid use and availability. By randomly conducting student interviews, this method reveals that black markets are rampant in colleges that result in inaccessibility. The strategy recommends various steps like implementing abuse-deterrent technology which aims at discouraging manipulation of drugs. Both federal and state law agencies should also create regulations of quantity, storage, and distribution of opioid drugs. Furthermore, it aims at creating students and public awareness of drug take-back plan, with the aim of collecting and disposing of the unused drugs.
Adapting a Proven Reducing Harm Strategy to Control Opioid Abuse among College Students
Opioid use can lead to negative consequences such as the transmission of diseases, increased mortality, and lowered life quality among college students. Thus, any strategy aims to end or reduce the use of the opioid drug. Reducing harm strategy encompasses approach that champions safer drug use, managed use, and abstinence. The approaches include: first, reversing overdose using naloxone can reverse respiratory and central nervous system depression, thereby preventing death. Through reverse overdose, many programs are formed to reduce the harm. Community-based programs like overdose education enlighten people on recognizing and responding to the problem. System-based programs also train veterans majorly on minimizing the use of opioid drugs and seeking alternative painkillers.
Pharmacy-based programs, additionally, aims at counseling and training patients, especially students and their families on how to use naloxone kits. This has built trust and solved the risk factors associated with the use of illicit opioids. Healthcare providers may also practice provider-based programs through identification of risky patients to opioid overdose and helping them by opioid-naloxone co-prescription.
Second, reducing disease transmission approach is vital in this strategy since it works towards reducing syringe exchange, supervising injection facilities, behavioral intervention, and drug checking in the bloodstream (Stockings et al. 2016).
Expected End Result and Benefits
Efforts to restrain the opioid abuse hazard among college students are challenged by many factors that all relate to the public perceptions of these medications. Opioid medications have a very high addiction and abuse potential, and their over-prescription is alarming despite their legal status. Luckily, various steps taken to curb the opioid crisis have signaled promising results. Due to a better understanding of the epidemic’s underlying causes, it is sagacious for the United States government, consumers, and professionals to be well equipped as they address this public health concern caused by opioid abuse. Much effort should also be given in educating college students and the society, preventing diversion and abuse, as well as exploring knowledge on opioid abuse factors so that the truth behind its crisis is exposed. Implementing reducing harm strategy will hugely minimize deaths and also instill professional and friendly methods of control and change.
References
Dart, R. C., Surratt, H. L., Cicero, T. J., Parrino, M. W., Severtson, S. G., Bucher-Bartelson, B., & Green, J. L. (2015). Trends in opioid analgesic abuse and mortality in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine , 372 (3), 241-248.
Stockings, E., Hall, W. D., Lynskey, M., Morley, K. I., Reavley, N., Strang, J., ... & Degenhardt, L. (2016). Prevention, early intervention, harms reduction, and treatment of substance use in young people. T he Lancet Psychiatry , 3 (3), 280-296.
