Opioids

Drug abuse is an epidemic we are currently facing around the world. We have been hit with 3 major waves in America. The first was in the 1990s when doctors began overprescribing opioid painkillers. Then, in the early 2000s with the rise of heroin abuse. Now, the most recent wave we have witnessed was the boom of Fentanyl in 2017. With the consideration of the many people struggling with an addiction to heroin and the outrageous numbers of heroin overdoses. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than Heroin. That within itself is scary to imagine, but, apparently, there is a newer drug called Dsuvia. It is 1,000 times stronger than morphine and 10 times stronger than Fentanyl. We could be on the brink of another opioid crisis wave with this drug. It was stated in “America’s Deadliest Drug Video,” that “Fentanyl and its analogs have killed an estimated 95,000 people in 5 years”. Also, in 2017 over 47,000 people died from opioid overdoses. In the “Drug overdose deaths were so bad in 2017, they reduced overall life expectancy” article, it was stated that the number of drug overdoses in 2017 was so high it contributed to a drop in life expectancy in the U.S. There were over 70,000 overdose deaths in 2017, highest in U.S. history, and the majority of these overdoses were from synthetic opioids like Fentanyl. It is heart-wrenching to see all the people affected by the disease of addiction. Addiction tends to have a domino effect on people suffering from it and their friends and families as well. It’s a vicious cycle many people tend to fall victim to. With this, you may ask, why don’t doctors take more precautions when prescribing these very addictive drugs?