The year 2015, America experienced the worst deaths as a result of drug overdose. This occurred when the country’s health care system working with pharmaceutical companies introduced the US market with some form of opioid painkillers. Simultaneously, some drug traffickers also introduced other drugs such as heroin, fentanyl, and other illegal manufactured opioids. The unlawful idea was that people would even use such medications if and when they ran out of painkillers (Rocker et al., 2018). Conversely, it made it easier to access and abuse of this drugs. Interestingly, this abuse was being done by people who wanted something stronger other than the normal painkillers. Consequentially, this epidemic critically affected the American people’s life expectancy and a thousand deaths that are still being experienced until today. This paper, therefore, purposes to detail what is happening in the United States in the world of the opioid health crisis, where it all started and its effects.
This was a process that began in the before the 2000 millennium. The health care system and pharmaceutical companies in the US manufactured the opioid pain relievers and recommended that the drug was effective and without any side effects of being addicted. As a result and based on this representation, the health care system and medical practitioners had already started prescribing immensely to patients throughout the country. Since the drug was being used widely, there were cases of misuse and diversion before the government could establish that the opioids were highly addictive. In the year 2015-2016, thousands of Americans were reported dead as a result of opioids overdose (Volkow & Collins, 2017). This was not only on opioids alone but also overdose on heroin, fentanyl, and other illegally manufactured opioids.
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There are several opioids uses that are being used in America. These are opioid medical users and the non-medical use. The non-medical use revolves around using heroin and other drugs such as fentanyl. Medical opioids are used on prescription for pain relieving. On the other hand, non-medical opioid use revolves around the use of illicit or over the counter drugs some illegally manufactured and not used according to physician prescriptions.
This increased use of opioid, overdose and abuse has consequentially resulted in countrywide public health threat and a full-scale health epidemic. Generally, the opioid effect is not discriminatory. It is affecting everyone within reach or access to opioids. Some deaths reported have a significant relation to these drugs. Countless families have been affected either by addiction or death of one of their family members. The increase in overdose fatalities has called for attention from all the healthcare stakeholders to intervene and find a solution to curb this crisis
The Response towards the Opioid Crisis
Fundamentally, there are attempts at decreasing the number of individuals who use and abuse opioids. This approach is focused on reducing fatal overdoses . Notably, both the American Department of Health and Human Services referred to as the HHS in conjunction with the National Institute of Health referred to as NIH has introduced initiatives aimed at alleviating this situation ( Camilleri, 2018). The focus can be simplified to five points which include. First, present and promote the usage of overdose-reversing drugs. Secondly, advance better practices for management, improving access to health care facilities and access to treatment and recovery services. In the same breath, HHS has introduced initiative of strengthening the Americans understanding of the crisis through improved public health surveillance and monitoring.
Simultaneously, the HHS and NIH are the country ’s medical research agencies funded by the government have also introduced measures that have embarked on finding ways to reduce or assist in solving the opioid crisis. This is being done in several ways such as attempts to discover other non-addictive drugs or mechanisms of preventing and help curb the misuse of opioid. Separately, the agencies have focused finding an effective treatment for related opioid disorders. Interestingly, HHS is also working on finding alternative mechanisms of managing pain other than the use of opioids (Negus, 2018). These mechanisms have been epitomized by both HHS and NIH partnering and working together with the states pharmaceutical companies and other researchers within the state. Recently, the United States president Donald Trump has declared the opioid crisis as a national emergency that needs immediate redress. Trump has called for all the stakeholders to devote their time and funds to the state towards addressing the effects of the opioid epidemic.
Conclusions
In a nutshell, there is no debate on whether the health sector and the government are correctly and efficiently addressing the opioid crisis. However on assessing the methods used alleviate this situation, one discovers that there is some lacklustre, a step has been missed. Notably, it is evident that the crisis began with the introduction of opioid painkillers, now this being the cause, the government agencies and regulators opted to pull it back the drugs. Fundamentally limit its prescriptions and stricter laws legislated. Consequentially this has indeed shown some results as there has been a reduction of fatal overdose. However, this is not final there is a lot that needs to be covered. This is because cutting off pulling back opioids has more negative effects. This is because some people are so addicted to the drug and will not easily withstand this painful withdrawal. This being the case, there is a likelihood of the person resorting to other illegal opioids, for instance, heroin and fentanyl.
References
Camilleri, M. (2018). Towards an effective peripheral visceral analgesic: Responding to the national opioid crisis. American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology . doi: 10.1152/ajpgi.00013.2018.
Negus, S. S. (2018). Addressing the Opioid Crisis: The Importance of Choosing Translational Endpoints in Analgesic Drug Discovery. Trends in pharmacological sciences , 39 (4), 327-330. doi: 10.1016/j.tips.2018.02.002.
Rocker, G., Bourbeau, J., & Downar, J. (2018). The New “Opioid Crisis”: Scientific Bias, Media Attention, and Potential Harms for Patients with Refractory Dyspnea. Journal of palliative medicine , 21 (2), 120-122.
Volkow, N. D., & Collins, F. S. (2017). The role of science in addressing the opioid crisis. New England Journal of Medicine , 377 (4), 391-394.
