(This is the second part series of our first post: How the Opioid crisis began in the USA Part 1)
How the Opioid crisis began in the USA Part 2
The widespread abuse of prescription drugs has led to a national crisis. We are now in the grips again of a perfect storm of opiate abuse with individuals overdosing on prescription opioids, their illegal cousin heroin, and, increasingly, synthetic drugs such as fentanyl. In our previous post we examined how the USA found itself gripped with an opiate addiction in the past, today our aim to expose just how history repeated itself and grew once again into a deadly addiction sweeping the nation.
We last left off detailing legislative acts such as the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 which were put in place in an attempt to quell the rising rate of those addicted to opiates. Although these acts did succeed in reducing the numbers of those afflicted by opiate addiction by limiting the availability, they also tragically led to the creation of illegal underground where widespread opiate abuse continued to thrive. Gangster including Arnold Rothstein who trafficked in illegal heroin in the prohibition-era of the 1920s soon became become the country’s first drug kingpins. Due to the nature of any underground market we are unable to truly view just how large this ecosystem was and the deaths caused by it were.
It is also worth highlighting that although legislative acts were introduced this did not stop pharmaceutical companies manufacturing numerous forms of medication derived from opiates, often used for pain relief. Profit led businesses often employed aggressive marketing techniques to push their products out into marketplace and firmly into the nation’s mindset. From 1996 to 2001, American pharma king pin Purdue Pharma held more than 40 national “pain management symposia”, hosting thousands of American doctors, nurses and pharmacists. This led to a tide of prescription abuse, which is the term used to describe taking any medication at the higher dosage than prescribed or taking someone else’s prescribed medication. Nearly half of all opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid. Federal legislators were unable to keep up with the rising number of those abusing prescriptions, coupled with factors such as increased globalization, which in turn led to an exodus of manufacturing jobs throughout the 1950s and 60s. This hit the Rust Belt areas such as the Northeast, Midwest and Appalachia forcing many into economic disparity and adding to a national wave of discouragement and rejection forced many to begin abusing opiates as a mean of escapism.
The number of opioid prescriptions dispensed by doctors steadily increased from 112 million prescriptions in 1992 to a peak of 282 million in 2012, according to the market research firm IMS Health. Similar to the past market pharmacists and doctors readily prescribing these drugs led to a national health crisis. Between 2007 and 2016, the most widely prescribed opioid was hydrocodone (Vicodin). In 2016, 6.2 billion hydrocodone pills were distributed nationwide. The second most prevalent opioid was oxycodone (Percocet).
We have covered links of the current opiate epidemic to the past, in an attempt to highlight how history is repeating itself, however there are some notable differences one is the amount of people affected as well as the increase in mortality rates. Whereas in the past estimates of roughly 300,000 Americans are thought to have had opiate addictions. The current rate of those addicted to opiates is estimated to be at least three times this amount in2016, there were more than 63,600 overdose deaths in the United States, including 42,249 that involved an opioid (66.4%). That’s an average of 115 opioid overdose deaths each day. The cause of this includes synthetic drugs such as fentanyl which is far more likely to cause an overdose and death in the individual. Due to its chemical nature of being difficult to detect it has been easily flooded into the USA. U.S. law enforcement agents have never had to confront criminal networks as well-structure and intelligent as the traffickers who dominate narcotics distribution today.
We hope this has been educational for you and shown you how this current health crisis began. The best way to stop addiction is to keep people from getting on that train to begin with. The battle to save lives will have to be waged one person at a time and one day at a time.
If you or someone you love is suffering from addiction to opiate addiction, don’t wait until it’s too late. Call Wings of Encouragement any time to get started with opiate rehab. Our team will help you or your loved ones get on the path to a new, healthy and sober life.
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