Argumentative Essay On Opioids

Usage of opioids in America has been popular since before the times of the Civil War and began to flourish during the years of the war when morphine was used for treating pain due to battle wounds. It didn’t take America very long to begin abusing multiple variations of these powerful drugs. In the year 1898, The Bayer Company, a company popular now for the production of aspirin, brought the very first opioid, heroin, to the shelves for everyone to use. Originally it was used universally as a cough suppressant, and eventually was discovered to be even more helpful for relieving pain. Addicts almost immediately began to misuse the drug, and by the 1920s, doctors tried to avoid prescribing any type of opioid medications to their patients because

Present-day doctors are becoming progressively increasingly selfish with their jobs. They are being praised for what some would like to consider ‘malpractice’, while many of their patients are paying the price for it. Doctors are not putting as much effort into treating their patients as they should be, and more specifically, not doing what is best for each individual patient in regards to how they treat and help manage patients’ pain. CNN reports that, “The CNN/Harvard analysis looked at 2014 and 2015, during which time more than 811,000 doctors had written prescriptions to Medicare patients. Of those, nearly half wrote at least one prescription for opioids. Fifty-four percent of those doctors -- more than 200,000 physicians -- received a payment from pharmaceutical companies that make opioids” (Kessler, Cohen & Grise, 2018). Approximately 400,000 doctors between 2014 and 2015 had written prescriptions for just pain relief, most of which were opiate drugs, and within those 400,000 doctors, over half of them were being paid directly by the pharmaceutical companies for prescribing the drugs. This clearly shows that doctors are more focused on the money-making aspect of their careers and less about making real attempts to care for and help their patients, for the pain relief that they’re providing is only

It is clear that money-making is outweighing the importance of the health of millions of citizens countrywide, and that doctors are being incautious in regards to the prescriptions that they’re giving these patients. Doctors should have more limits placed on them in regards to the medication that they prescribe, and doctors should be made more aware of the potential damage that opioids could bring about for each individual patient that they treat. The U.S. government should take action and restrictive laws should be passed, and doctors should have new limits placed on what drugs they are prescribing; in response, doctors will more than likely decrease the amounts of opioid prescriptions that they write. In return, the rates of abuse and misuse for opioids will decrease, reducing the rates of overdose due to these drugs. Patients that experience any type of pain should begin to explore different sources to alleviate pain, such as over-the-counter relief or physical therapy. If this issue remains ignored by the majority of the population in the United States, the drugs will continue to negatively affect the lives of millions, the population, and the well-being of the country as a