Originally posted by TacCovert4
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It is also scandalous to see that the medical professionals do not do enough to inform the crowd about this serious problem. Even though prescription drug overdose deaths is now the number one reason of accidental deaths. many people still do not know about it. Compare this attitude to, say, the publicity of the campaign against smoking or the publicity of the issue of gun violence. The medical professionals do have a responsibility to inform the public but they have failed to take the appropriate measures. As for the actual drugs used in overdose cases by people on prescription, it is both prescription drugs and illegal drugs. For example, according to drugabuse.gov (webpage: How is heroin linked to prescription drug abuse?)
"Harmful health consequences resulting from the abuse of opioid medications that are prescribed for the treatment of pain, such as Oxycontin®, Vicodin®, and Demerol®, have dramatically increased in recent years. For example, unintentional poisoning deaths from prescription opioids quadrupled from 1999 to 2010 and now outnumber those from heroin and cocaine combined....
Research now suggests that abuse of these medications may actually open the door to heroin use. Nearly half of young people who inject heroin surveyed in three recent studies reported abusing prescription opioids before starting to use heroin."
In any case, the type of drug used does not change the fact that we should make reforms to reduce the chances of having people become addicted to opioids. And this is related to the "social-economic" factors in the medical field. The acceptance of personal responsibility does not mean that we should ignore the culture in the medical field. Nor does it make sense to hear people bashing the Chicago's urban culture when they talk about the victims of gun violence there but somehow refusing to accept the corrosive role of the current market-oriented culture in the healthcare industry which has actually produced much more victims than all gun violence (homicides) in the US combined!
As for the question of if the victims are actually the ones who were prescribed the medication, it is probably true in most cases considering that we are talking about highly addictive substances. In addition, the links I posted earlier show a connection (correlation) between high mortality as a result of prescription drug overdoses and chronic pain. Plus, we have seen how these overdoses affect mostly white middle-aged Americans by increasing their mortality. There is no reason to believe that trade of prescription drugs should affect mostly white middle-aged Americans. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense to see white middle-aged patients of opioid prescription becoming addicted in higher rates and suffering higher deaths from overdoses.
But even If we assume that in most or in many cases the prescription drugs are not consumed by the actual patient, we still have to address the issue of a fast increase of availability of opioids. So, either the doctors prescribe them to people who do not actually need them or they prescribe too much to enable the patients to trade the surplus.
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