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Argumentative Essay On Prescription Drug Abuse

570 Words3 Pages

Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, and Prince Rogers Nelson are names you probably recognize , but do you know what they all have in common? Aside being famous, they died from prescription drug overdoses. In 2014, nearly 2 million Americans abused or were dependent on prescription drugs(CDC, 2016), one could imagine how many abused prescription drugs worldwide. This is a grand epidemic that is taking over the nation, and the numbers are growing exponentially. Many states have created different legislations to reduce prescription drug abuse, overdose, and misuse(NCSL, 2016); but are these laws targeting the right people? Can we really blame the fault on the innocent patients? Not all doctors are malicious, however, there are doctors who commit negligence and malpractice. Unfortunately doctors are human and accidentally cause harm, or unintentional tort, to the patient. In other cases, doctors take advantage of their patient’s lack of knowledge and make profit off of the prescriptions. Cases such as these have been happening for years and …show more content…

A common drug that is prescribed to patients with ADHD, called adderall, is used illegally as a stimulant due to the mood altering effects. The patients are placed in danger due to the doctor’s decision of prescribing the drugs. The patients are not aware of the dangers associated with misuse and abuse(Kirkpatrick, et al., 2012). Everyone knows of the Bayer Aspirin, but what people do not know is that in 1898, the Bayer company massed produced heroin and was given to patients for pain and cough; the doctors and media back then were able to convince many people that there were no side effects at all from taking heroin and that is was beneficial(Heroin, 2016). People were clueless about drugs and we have improved since then, but the greed has not .The US finally banned heroin

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