The media, being the messenger to the masses, has a responsibility to communicate the exhibited prowess of a society. However, as history has shown, the realization and refinement of a flaw is the true hallmark of an exceptional nation. So, with the seemingly ubiquitous gobbledygook the current media spits out to society continuing on, more important issues are being wildly disregarded. One crucial concern unbeknownst to the public is the extreme increase in prescription drug overdoses. Prescription drug abuse has skyrocketed in the past twenty years. As more and more abusers seek mind-numbing medications, the practice of visiting multiple physicians to obtain multiple prescriptions, or “doctor shopping,” amplifies. Addictive prescription drugs need to be monitored to combat these problems of abuse. Though state-operated prescription drug monitoring programs, or PDMPs, are currently in use to regulate the controlled substance medications being prescribed, …show more content…
These databases are meant to help control the amount of medication prescribed to an individual at one time. This makes it both harder for an abuser to visit various doctors for multiple prescriptions and easier to identify illicit doctor shopping activities. However, most PDMPs have a lag of about one week when relaying “prescribing information” (Source C) and this lag causes lapses in the information shared between doctors, allowing an addict to obtain more medication within that lag period without alerting suspecian. In order to fix this, state databases should follow the example of Oklahoma, who “collects data [...] at the same time that a prescription is filled” (Source C) allowing for real-time information distribution that will thwart the intentions of an abuser. Not only would fixing this lag help regulate how much medicine is prescribed to patients, but it will also reduce the number of overdose deaths in the