College Compisition 2

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Hypothesis 1: Doctors and Hospitals may prescribe you drugs you do not need.

Hypothesis 2: Doctors should not prescribe opioids.

Hypothesis 3: Doctors are prescribing opioids for their financial benefit.

Resources and their Purposeful Summary:

1. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmp1208498

PS: In 2010 there was a reported 2.4 million abusers of opioids in America. According to this article around the 19th century doctors believed that pain was necessary for patients and their healing process. Over time though doctors would start to sway away from this idea with the introduction of morphine and even oxycontin. As more pain remedies became more available doctors started to change their ideas on pain. Doctors started to use remedies for pain on their patients. This is because in 2001 the medical board of California passed a law that every licensed doctor must complete a new course known as pain management. From there Doctors started to treat patients based on their pain levels and how severe their pain was.

2. https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j4792

The opioid crisis is a product of the medical care people are receiving. In past years, doctors would prescribe the occasional medication for injuries, post operations, and ongoing issues. Today, this use of opioids is coming from the many doctors who are supposed to be making people feel better. There are tons of doctors who only prescribe opioids when truly necessary, giving them tons of warnings and fully explaining to the patient that the medication should only be taken when they really need it. Other Doctors just prescribe opioids instead of non-opioid alternatives for almost everything . Most of the time, that medication is Oxycodone which can cause major issues for the patient. The instructions for this medication express that 5-10 mg prescriptions should be taken every 4-6 hours. This amount of Oxycodone can be very dangerous.

3. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.3/tcicero?cookieSet=1

The United States is the world’s largest consumer of opioids. Opioid prescriptions in 1991, were totaled at around 76 million prescriptions. By 2011, opioids had reached 219 million prescriptions in just one year. To further the issue there was a spike in emergency room visits, treatment admissions, and overdose deaths due to opioids. For most opioid abusers the drug produced a safe high for them because the opioid pill is dosed to perfection users feel it would be harder to overdose on opioids compared to its cousin heroin. Also for opioid abusers the drug is legal so if abusers were to get stopped and caught with this drug on them it would be looked at as an antibiotic prescribed from a doctor giving the abuser the feeling of safety. Not only this though when opioid abusers first started taking this addictive drug, they believed it could cause them no harm because a doctor gave it to them, but boy were they wrong.

4. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009145090503200204

The power of overprescribing that doctors hold can affect more than just a single person. The introduction of Oxycodone into Kentucky occurred in the late 1990’s. The drug was over prescribed by doctors and slowly started to be produced on the blackmarket. The article touches base on the idea that the abuse of the opioid caused crime rates in Kentucky to spike in rural areas. These opioid and drug abuse epidemics are causing issues within houses, communities, towns, cities, states, and so much more.

5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871618306872

The use and abuse of opioids and methamphetamine have been seen to coincide in previous years. When the use of oxycodone becomes limited, users will make the switch to something stronger, more affordable, and more accessible. The one upside to this is that the abuse of doctor prescribed opioids is declining, however, the use of methamphetamine in the United States continues to increase. This article discusses a survey taken by a group of scientists. The researchers found that the percent of methamphetamine use in treatment-seeking opioid users increased from 18.8% in 2011 to 34.2% in 2017. Overall, the researchers believe that the increase in methamphetamine users is coming from opioid users.

Topics

• Doctors getting paid in the back end for just prescribing opioids.
• Opioid abusers who made the switch to cheaper and deadlier drugs for their fix.
• Doctors over prescribing opioids compared to doctors who do not prescribe opioids as often.
• Overdoses related to opioids.
• Pharmacy’s prescribing or continuously giving out opioids to suspected opioid abusers.
• Opioid abusers who would sell opioids.