Persuasive Essay On Opioids

Throughout the past three decades, there has been a deadly nationwide epidemic in America. Like a disease, it has continued to spread in the United States causing sickness, broken up families, and death. However, this disease cannot be treated with antivirals, nor can be prevented with vaccines. This disease is the widespread misuse of opioids and opioid variants. Opioids have become so highly addictive and abused over the last 30 years that “between 1999 and 2019, nearly half a million people died from opioid overdose, over half of all US deaths due to drug overdose” (Gardner et. al 44). Opioid-related deaths have become one of the top killers in America. This killer does not just lurk in dark alleyways and on grimy city sidewalks but also

Although this epidemic has been surging for the past 30 years, there has yet to have been an effective solution to drastically reduce the number of deaths and recurring addictions. The U.S. government has implemented different solutions, but the use of opioids still prevails. Even though drug use is criminalized in most places in the U.S., people are still continuing to use and abuse drugs. While many different approaches are hypothesized to stop the use of drugs, new forms of opioid use and problems seem to arise. There exists stigmas, stereotypes, and false information that have spread about drug use and addiction which hinders people's abilities to be able to understand and offer help to addicts and drug users. Addiction coupled with stigma forces many to suffer in silence. In order to be able to find solutions to end the epidemic, there needs to be a better understanding of the root causes of this epidemic and address the issues with the systems currently implemented. The opioid epidemic in the United States is a monumental issue that only seems to increase in severity over time becoming one of the leading causes of death in the United States, making it imperative to stop the seemingly endless cycle of the epidemic and to find new solutions to prevent, stop, and lessen opioid

Reformulation did not help diminish preexisting OxyContin addictions but provoked people to seek out their fix through stronger means. Opioid pills paved the way for street drugs such as heroin. Black tar heroin was appealing to many OxyContin addicts as it was incredibly cheap, yet potent; and most of all, satisfied their opioid cravings. CDC data suggests that “people who misuse prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to become addicted to heroin than those who do not misuse prescription opioids” (Wickramatilake et al. 171). Consequently, America saw an en-masse departure from pills to heroin which began permeating wealthy suburbs, high schools, and other locations previously assumed to be “safe” from street drugs. Illicit drugs, such as methamphetamine usually affected impoverished white males, but the opioid crisis affected all types of people from all different walks of life; users ranged from high-achieving scholars, to stay-at-home moms, to well-respected administrators; essentially, the opioid crisis saw demographics not previously recognized in other drug use populations (Wood and Elliot 1). With such a broad user basis, and the ever-growing demand for heroin, a third and deadlier wave of the opioid crisis hit “when the influx of synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyl and carfentanil, proliferated within the illicit opioid supply as the demand for