The opioid crisis in the USA is at a quite staggering high. It’s in the headlines each and every day, with it believed around 1,500 people are dying a week as a result of fentanyl overdoses. It’s a truly heartbreaking figure, and one that’s only continuing to rise.
The US government is moving forward with plans to try and ease the crisis, with a number of initiatives in place to get more people through heroin rehab and the likes, as well as issuing more naloxone and making it more readily available to reverse the symptoms of an overdose and save lives.
But why is the USA being so affected by opioids at present?
Overprescription of Opioids
One primary cause is overprescription of opioid painkillers during their history. Pharmaceutical groups falsely confident fitness care providers inside the overdue ’90s that prescribing opioids could now not lead to dependancy; Unfortunately, this changed into not proper and caused a dramatic boom inside the prescription of opioid analgesics and elevated dependence amongst healthcare experts and their sufferers.
Aggressive Marketing by Pharmaceutical Companies
At that time, certain pharmaceutical companies employed an elaborate marketing and sales ploy. Their misleading advertising misled healthcare providers and patients regarding the addictiveness of painkillers (especially Fentanyl) thus encouraging people to feel secure taking them.
There have been many court cases as a result of this since and it’s reverbarating through communities in the USA to this day.
Lack of Effective Prescription Monitoring
Equally, while a lot of blame can fall on the pharmaceutical companies, a lack of tracking patient’s prescriptions also caused problems with people essentially able to “doctor shop” in order to obtain multiple prescriptions. This has led to widespread addiction, and the realisation that more needs to be done to avoid such situations.
Economic Factors and Desperation
Like most drug abuse, people are also victims of their surroundings. Turning to alcohol, opiods or any other kind of addiction is often a result of financial hardship or poor living conditions. Taking such substances are seen as numbing the pain and act as an escape from their problems. But of course, it doesn’t really work like that, only adding to problems people face.
Stigma and Treatment Gaps
Unfortunately, addiction has long been associated with stigma and shame; as such it often discourages individuals from reaching out and seeking the necessary help they require. Furthermore, due to a shortage of treatment facilities nationwide it becomes harder for economically challenged patients to obtain opioid rehab, perpetuating their cycle of dependency.
Regulatory Challenges
Finally, regulation in the country just hasn’t been able to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the opioid crisis. Things such as prescription monitoring has been slow in its implementation, while the complexity of the crisis as a whole has made it very difficult to govern swiftly and effectively.
And it’s that complexity which is why the crisis has got so far out of hand, with more needed to be done to tackle the causes above and send the USA’s overdose figures into a decline over the next 12 months and beyond.
