Prescription Drug Abuse Research Paper

Michael Jackson, Prince, Heath Ledger: What do they all have in common? They all died from prescription drug abuse (“Prescription Medication Abuse” 1). Not only them, but an increasing number of people in the United States lose their lives each year due to overdoses (“Prescription Medication Abuse” 1). Easy accessibility to prescription drugs causes danger to teens and adults, and limiting the access to these prescriptions lessens the growing drug epidemic in the United States. Addiction is caused by medications that possess psychoactive properties (“Prescription Medication Abuse” 1). “An addiction may develop when a prescribed medication provides so much relief that the patient craves more of the substance and exceeds the prescribed dosage” …show more content…
That is because prescription drugs are far too easily accessible (Szabo 2). In the 1990s, there was a change in doctors’ prescribing habits that lead to the rise in prescription drug abuse (Thomas 2). Doctors felt they had to do a better job of managing chronic pain, so they began giving out more and more prescriptions for pain drugs (Thomas 2). “Doctors today are also more apt to prescribe pain pills in an effort to relieve real suffering”, said James Garbutt, a University of North Carolina addiction specialist (Szabo 2). H. Westley Clark, the director of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, doctors have recently been more sympathetic and prescribed more (Miller 2). According to Kathleen Kane-Willis, the director of Roosevelt University’s Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy, “greater availability opened the door for more widespread abuse” (Thomas 2). A 30 year old man named Dan struggled with an addiction to Vicodin for eight years after he was first prescribed the drug after a motorcycle accident (Thomas 2). In Dan’s opinion, it is as easy to get pain medication as it is to get alcohol. According to Dan, who was an addict for eight years, it is as simple as telling a doctor about pain being experienced. The doctor then can be used for medication for about a month or two before catching on, in Dan’s experience (Thomas 3). Most prescription drug abusers obtain the drugs from …show more content…
Some people depend on pills to function during their everyday lives. Anti-benzo psychologists believe that if Americans learned to manage their anxiety without pills, they would be much healthier and happier (Miller 6). Doug Mennin, an anxiety specialist at Hunter College stated “The mind is a muscle. With practice, you can teach it to handle anxiety: It is the same kind of skill as learning a better backhand in tennis” (Miller 6). Christopher Gharibo, medical director of pain at New York University, approaches pain by encouraging patients to come to terms with the fact that they may never be completely be free of pain (Szabo 3). In order to further prevent prescription drug abuse, safe drug disposal is an important factor (Thomas 3). The head of the department of pharmacy practice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Janet Engle, recommends mixing the medication with an undesirable substance and throwing it out in a different sealed container (Thomas 3). In 2016, United States Surgeon General Viviek Murthy sent a letter to all physicians and health care providers in America (“Prescription Medication Abuse” 2). He begged them to help put a stop to the rising issue of prescription medication abuse by asking doctors to consider how addictive painkillers can be (“Prescription Medication Abuse”

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