Prescription Painkillers And Its Effects On America

In 2014, approximately 47,000 Americans died from the overdose of drugs. The fact that Americas drug problem has gotten this out of hand is alarming, but when taking a closer look at these numbers, it becomes clear that many of these Americans are not dying from illegal drugs like cocaine, meth, heroin, or marijuana. Instead, legal opioid painkillers were the biggest cause of overdose, resulting in approximately 14,000 deaths in 2014. In the 1990s, doctors began treating chronic pain as a serious issue, prescribing large amounts of opioid painkillers, and by 2012 doctors wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers. Opioid painkillers are highly addictive drugs that bind to receptors in the brain, reducing pain messaging to the nervous system. When scientists began to realize the harmful and addicting effects of painkillers, prescriptions were pulled back, causing users to turn to another opioid: heroin. The painkiller addiction problem became so serious that the Obama Administrat ion has put 1.1 billion dollars into funding addiction education, prevention, and treatment; however, when doctors eliminated painkillers, they need an alternative to treating chronic pain. In order to suffice, doctors have looked at another controversial issue: medical marijuana. Studies have shown that cannabis can help treat chronic pain in most cases, and unlike opioids, marijuana isn’t linked to deadly overdoses. However, opposers are worried about marijuana’s harmful effects on the brainShow MoreRelatedDrug Use American Society Today Essay1202 Words   |  5 PagesDrug Use in American Society Today Drug use in America is one of the major issues we face and the problem has skyrocketed over the past three decades. Heroin and painkiller addictions exceed all other countries. 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