Opioid Overdose Crisis Essay

“Everyday, more than 115 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids,” (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2018, Opioid Overdose Crisis). Opioid drug abuse has become a growing issue in the United States since the late 1990s. “In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers, and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates,” (Public Affairs, 2018, What is the U.S. Opioid Epidemic?). Opioids can be either prescription medications such as morphine, however heroin is also considered to be an opioid. Opioids have been proven to be highly addictive, and there has been an increase in misuse and overdose of opioid drugs. “Opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 deaths in 2016, more than any previous year on record. An estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid,” (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2018, Opioid Overdose Crisis).

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has developed the 5-point Opioid Strategy to combat opioid addiction. In 2017 the 5-point Opioid Strategy was launched, it was comprised of these five steps: improve access to treatment, collect better data about the crisis, better pain management, promoting overdose-reversing drugs, and support research on pain and addiction. “The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a component of HHS, is the nation's leading medical research agency helping solve the opioid crisis via discovering new and better ways to prevent opioid misuse, treat opioid use disorders, and manage pain,” (The National Institute of health, 2018, Opioid Overdose Crisis). The NIH met with pharmaceutical companies and academic research centers in 2017 to discuss effective, non-addictive ways to manage chronic pain, new medications and technologies to treat opioid disorders, and to improve interventions in overdose and reversal to support