Essay Example on Opiates and Opioids: Pain-Relieving Drugs With Similar Effects

Introduction

Opiate or opioid refers to types of narcotic-pain-relieving with same side effects and actions. Opiate describes a drug that is made from opium, which comes from the opium poppy plant with many historical uses like treating pain and causing sleep. Opiate drugs come in different forms like injections, capsules, and tablets. The opiate attaches with variable strength to specific body parts in the stomach and brains known as opioid receptors. While in the brain, the receptors result in reduced pain, drowsiness and slowed breathing. In the stomach, opiate reduces it resulting in opioid-induced constipation. The severe effects of opiates are expected and manageable through correct medications.

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The safety of opiates is small and varies from one individual to another. The chronic uses of opiates develop tolerance to their initial dose because they need higher doses to achieve the desired effect. This is known as opiate tolerance and can happen if a person has been taking the drug for a few weeks. People can be opioid naive if they fail to take the drug recently. It is ironical that individuals who are opioid naive have a higher risk of facing side effects linked with its overdose due to lack of tolerance. People with opioid tolerance are probably to encounter withdrawal signs immediately they stop using opiates. During the overdose of opiates, the drugs cause overwhelming of the human brains, reduction in the drive of the body to breath and remove the alarm response that usually happens in the presence of oxygen. Breathing rate can reduce to harmful condition or stop completely. Therefore, reversing the effects of opiates is required as fast as possible to avoid the damage of brain and death. Unfortunately, the use of opiate has risen, and individuals are dying from its overdose at a rate that is more than the death level experienced at the highest level of AIDS epidemic. Whether it is teens, children, veterans, adults, elderly, no group of the community is not affected by the opiate epidemic. Therefore, it is essential to establish when the opiate crisis started and its effects on West Baltimore city.

Origin of Opiate Crisis

Many trace the origin of the opiate crisis back in the 90s. When the Pharmaceutical firms were looking for a new and effective painkiller, they started to for synthetic and semi-synthetic opioids to health practitioners. The firms argue that the drugs were non-addictive or less in comparison to morphine and did not pose any harmful side effects. Naturally, doctors started pushing the opiate drugs because they did not see any issue with the health of the patients who took them. The growth in the demand for opioid led to the rise in the distribution of the drug to a level that remains firm these days, which contribute to the current epidemic that countries are trying to deal with.

Many of the individuals become addicts to the drug after getting it at some point. The highly addictive nature of the substance makes it easier for the brains to need more. It is only after successive prescription that end users realize that they depend on the effects of the drugs to live normally. At that point, the individuals are either forced to endure the pain associated with the drugs and get clean or look for alternatives to making themselves high. At this time, people turn to illicit substances or other analogies as long as they achieve what they need. The expensiveness of the opioids makes people turn to heroin, which is less expensive. Heroin is more potent, cheaper and easier to get than opiate drugs. About 80% of heroin addicts started using the opioid substance (Kolodny et al., 2015). After using heroin for a long time, these individuals become opioid addicts.

The opioid crisis has happened in three phases. The first wave started in 1991 when deaths caused by opioids started to increase following its sharp rise in prescription and combination of opioids in the treatment of pain (Partain & Kamdar, 2018). The rise in the prescription of opiates was caused by the reassurances that the pharmaceuticals firms offered the prescribers claiming that the addiction level of the drug was very low. During this time, the pharmaceuticals companies promoted the use of opiates in patients that experienced non-cancer related pain although there was no data concerning the benefits and risks to the patients. By 1999, almost 86% of the patients who were using opiates were doing so to treat non-cancer pain (Partain & Kamdar, 2018). The communities that readily accessed and prescribed opiates were the first ones to feel an increase in the abuse and diversion of the drug. This involved the illegal transfer of opiates from a prescribed individual to another.

The second phase of the opiate crisis started in 2010 with a sharp increase in deaths caused by abuse of heroin. As the efforts to reduce the illegal prescription of opiates which are becoming successful, which made it more difficult to obtain opiates, the focus of the patients turned to heroin, a potential illegal opiate. The use of heroin was high for all socioeconomic groups, both sexes and across all ages. About 80% of heroin users admit to having misused opiate prescription before turning on it (Allocco et al., 2016). Heroine, who is commonly injected, puts its users in a big risk of injection-related epidemics such as the HIV/AIDS, heart infections, bloodstream infections, skin infections, and hepatitis C and B.

The third phase opiate crisis started in 2013 as a result of deaths caused by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. The sharp rise took place in 2016 with deaths of more than 20,000 persons were reported and thought to be caused by fentanyl substance (Allocco et al., 2016). The increase in the use of fentanyl substance has been connected with the illegal manufacture of fentanyl that is used to replace or increase the abuse of other drugs. To reduce the abuse of opiate and increase the benefits of the substance, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed guidelines for those who prescribe the opiates outside the treatment of cancer, end-of-life, and palliative care. The guidelines offer the idea of using opiates during the first stages of treating chronic pain. The medication involving opiates should be added after conducting a careful assessment of pain and regular evaluations of their continued requirement. Attempts to change patterns of prescribing to opiates have been majorly opposed by indirect invention from pharmaceutical firms through advocacy programs and lobbying. These measures include restricting the prescription of opiates, undermining the CDC guidelines and attempts of holding pharmaceutical firms and subscribers accountable. The major opposition of CDC guidelines originates from organizations that receive funding from the manufacturers of opiates.

Effects of Opiate Crisis on West Baltimore City

The number of people who have died because of an opiate overdose in West Baltimore has quadrupled since 1999. Baltimore still experiences a high rise in deaths caused by opioid than from homicide. This is very bad considering that there is a medication known as naloxone that can effectively reverse the negative effects that are caused by an overdose of opioid and save the lives of many people. Further, many people continue to lose their lives from something that can be easily prevented and reduce the increasing levels of addiction.

In some cases, medical practitioners administer naloxone to patients, but they end up choosing the opioid overdose than a substance that can save their lives. The sciences have proven that naloxone can save lives of people in West Baltimore, but access to the substance should not be an option. Baltimore's program to address the addiction caused by opioid should offer a comprehensive solution to make a significant impact of reducing the high rates of deaths caused by the addiction of opiate in the city. The addition of the opiate substance has made the officials in the city to think that all citizens should play their role in saving their lives. They have developed programs that ensure that naloxone is put in every citizen's medical program through the provision of first aid kits. Opioid-related deaths have hit high numbers in the past years. In 2017, 1.985 individuals lost their lives because of opioid overdose, which was a rate of 32 deaths per 1000,000 individuals. This was grater the United States national death rate of 14.6 deaths for every 100,000 people (Schiff et al., 2018). The United States ranks the use of fentanyl as the leading cause of deaths in West Baltimore City. From 2012 to 2013, there has been an increase in the number of deaths arising from synthetic opiates. The deaths resulting from the overdose of heroin in West Baltimore reduced to 522 in 2007 after having a dramatic increase from 173 individual's in 2012 to 650 in 2016. The drug death rate that involves opiates prescription has reduced to 711 in 2017 (Schiff et al., 2018).

Opiate crisis has led to the addition of many people in West Baltimore. Young adolescents and children are not immune to addiction to opiate and dependency. Children whose parents use the substance have been at high risk of addiction than those whose parents do not use opiate overdose. Expectant mother in Baltimore who have been using the Opiate substance have been able to pass their addition to their unborn children because chemicals flow through their bloodstream into that of their unborn babies'. The result of this is the births of children with symptoms of Opioid substance, multiple birth defect and low weight of their bodies. Children can easily access their parent's cabinets containing the opiate substance and use them without the knowledge of their parents. In 2015, almost 276,000 individuals aged from 12 to 17 used opiates in Biltmore City, with almost 122,000 experiencing the addiction.

The adolescents prescribe opioids in large volumes, which is double from the 1990s (Schiff et al., 2018). 1n 2017, about 777 adolescents aged from 15 to 19 in West Baltimore overdosed the opiate substance. The result of parental addiction to opiate can affect the children who do not use the drugs because they do not get the necessary time for parent-bonding. Children in homes that have parents addicted to opiate drugs are not able to construct functional, emotional connections required to make a child feel connected and nurtured well by their real parents or guardians. Some of the parents under the addiction of the opiate substance have unintentionally neglected their real children, which results in health care homes taking care of those children.

The addition of the opioid substance in West Baltimore is common because most addicts start using the substance as a prescription. Medical professionals prescribe drugs like Morphine and Vicodin to most patients before and after undergoing the surgery process. These pills are appropriate painkillers but carry very addictive effects when being abused. Opiates are common for their pleasant effects they cause tot the brains. When used, the causes the release of chemicals likes Dopamine, which creates intense and pleasurable sensations.

Opioids that most of the adolescents continue to abuse in West Baltimore release two to ten times the amount of dopamine from activities such as exercising, drinking water and having a good meal. Nevertheless, exposure to opiates has increased the addiction levels in West Baltimore city. Opiate crisis has worsened the economic development of West Baltimore City. It is estimated that about $78 billion to $500 billion has been used to deal with the opiate crisis in the region. The Whitehouse council of economic advisers argued that these estimates for the overall loss that opiate crisis has cau...