Essay Example on 400K Lives Lost: The Opioid Crisis in America

Prescribed opioids have contributed extraordinarily to the overdoses; they have been responsible for killing more than 400,000 Americans since 1999(Gordon, 2019). The expanded consumption of prescribed opioids prompted the rampant abuse of both non-prescribed and prescribed narcotics before it turned out to be evident that these drugs were profoundly addictive. Crushing results of the opioid crisis included increments for narcotic abuse and related overdoses, just as the rising frequency of infants encountering withdrawal disorder due to opioid use and abuse during pregnancy (Gordon, 2019).

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Opioid overdoses represented in excess of 42,000 deaths in 2016, more than any earlier year on record (Craft, 2017). An expected 40% of opioids overdose mortalities caused by prescribed opioids (Craft, 2017). As of late, powerful organizations and administrators in the pharmaceutical business have been confronting preliminary and paying settlements for misleadingly advertising opioid-based painkillers and paying off doctors to endorse them. Johnson and Johnson, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, and other significant players in Enormous Pharma have pulled in the most consideration from investigators and the media. A larger number of individuals currently die from opioids than from road traffic accidents. The number keeps on rising, fueled partly by lawfully-prescribed drugs, and halfway by illicitly made medications on the black market (Craft, 2017). Doctors have taken a lot of the fault for this, but the biggest contributor remains to be the pharmaceutical corporations since their business model relies on the continuous manufacturing and selling of prescription opioids.

Purdue Pharma is a medium-sized, in comparison to Big Pharma, its income is $3 billion or so every year (McGreal, 2019). Given a profit proportion of 20, that would make it worth $60 billion yet, it is still not at the top of the business chain (McGreal, 2019). The best six pharmaceutical organizations, the first Big Pharma, have valuations of $100 billion, and that's just the beginning. While Purdue makes an assortment of items, its fundamental spotlight is in the management of pain through the manufacturing and selling of painkillers. Furthermore, its top-rated pain prescription drug is OxyContin, a long-acting type of oxycodone. It is a known fact that oxycodone has been a central point in fueling the opioid epidemic crisis (McGreal, 2019).

Marketing mainly through advertising of OxyContin and its antecedent MS Contin started at a propitious time. The no-one ought to endure pain mantra as coined by the various movement was rapidly growing. Associations, the Kansas center for Viable Bioethics, was loudly complaining that physicians were too hesitant to even think about prescribing pain relievers (Simington, 2018). The pain is a crucial sign that had picked up footing. Survey studies had started to circle and to be paid attention by hospital executives, news media, and other gullible individuals. This meant that the markets were expanding as a result of pain medications increasing demands while pharmaceutical companies made huge profits (Simington, 2018). Above all, doctors, other health experts, and medical clinics had overlooked that morphine and its subsidiaries are hazardous medications; thus, the opioid crisis is currently witnessed.

The U.S. DEA Drug Enforcement Agency followed the manufacture, circulation, and selling of each opioid pill in the US from 2006 to 2012 (Randazzo & Hopkins, 2019). The database is known as the ARCOS (Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System). As per ARCOS, from 2006 to 2012, 76 billion narcotic pills were produced and offered to patients in America (Randazzo & Hopkins, 2019). In 2006, there were 8.4 billion narcotic pills in circulation. That number rose to 12.6 billion pills by 2012. ARCOS shows that SpecGx produced about 38% of the 76 billion opioid pills and that Actavis made about 35% (Randazzo & Hopkins, 2019). A large number of these pills went to wholesalers who, at that point, sent them to drug stores and pain centers in the nation, which previously had high rates of overdoses and addiction.

Subsequently, the opioid crisis has led to the war on the drugs task force, which currently enforces laws and aims for an overall decrease in consumption and addiction of prescribed and non- prescribed opioids. Also, it deals with rehabilitations of individuals diagnosed with opioid addiction worldwide (Manchikanti et al., 2018). Monetary expenditure is a factor in the entirety of this. Governments at all levels have seen the opioid addiction as over the top expensive, not simply indirect expenses of medical costs and law authorization, yet in addition to lost income. Addicts are a liability to the taxpayers, and that is an issue for governments. A ton of states, urban communities, and local governments might particularly want to find sponsors with profoundly deep pockets to pay a portion of the expenses (Manchikanti et al., 2018).

Being a Republican, a conservative, and an adherent to private enterprise and the commercial center does not expect me to disregard when organizations hurt individuals (McGreal, 2019). Companies, for example, Johnson and Johnson, and Purdue made bogus cases for the safety of the medications, not least in tampering with scientific papers to advance the deceptive attestation that there was less of what one percent danger of addiction from opiate painkillers. The producers financed scholarly studies that hewed their direction and specialist in training that underscored opioids as the default treatment for pain. Quite a bit of it was done at arm's length, with money infusions to autonomous medical social orders and with forceful campaigning on Statehouse Slope by the business' exchange gathering to oppose endeavors to get control over recommending even as the plague grew.

Conclusion

Pharmaceutical companies make tons of millions, if not billions, from drug sales, with a good percentage coming from painkiller medication sales, which largely contribute to the opioid crisis. This model of business, which focuses more on increasing profit margins for the investors, has gone to extreme fraudulent means of marketing, some of which are corrupt. In the recent past, several companies have faced lawsuits questioning some of the scientific literature regarding drug efficacy and side effects. If governments cannot effectively regulate these corporations, then powerful bodies should be enacted to be able to monitor and regulate Big Pharma as part of dealing with the opioid crisis.

References

McGreal, C. (2019, July 24). Capitalism Gone Wrong: How Big Pharma Created America's Opioid Carnage. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/24/opioids-crisis-big-pharma-drugs-carnage

Craft, P. V. (2017). Corporate "Medicine" Kill 15Xs More Americans Per Year Than 13 Years Of Domestic Terrorist Attacks.

Kertesz, S. G., & Gordon, A. J. (2019). A crisis of opioids and the limits of prescription control: United States. Addiction, 114(1), 169-180. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.14394

Manchikanti, L., Sanapati, J., Benyamin, R. M., Atluri, S., Kaye, A. D., & Hirsch, J. A. (2018). Reframing the prevention strategies of the opioid crisis: focusing on prescription opioids, fentanyl, and heroin epidemic. Pain Physician, 21(4), 309-326. https://doi.org/10.36076/ppj.2018.4.309

Randazzo S, Hopkins JS. (2019). Purdue Pharma Family Had Heavy Hand In Opioid Marketing, Complaint Says. Wall Street Journal. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2019.10b6

Simington, M. O. (2018, July). Creating a National Health Crisis. In Phi Kappa Phi Forum (Vol. 98, No. 2, pp. 22-22). National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-94186-5_923