Sunday, October 15, 2017

Heroin and Oxycodone

You cannot escape the terms Opioid Abuse, Opioid Epidemic, and Opioid Crisis, in today's news articles and political debates. The reason behind it is the steady increase in how many people have died from prescription painkillers over the past two decades.

I have an inside perspective into this state of affairs, as I have worked for a pharmacy around the time when pain management centers began to pop up and prescribe painkillers for every kind of ailment over 17 years ago. In addition, I have had two close people who have been engulfed by this epidemic. Luckily both of them are still alive and on an endless path to recovery.

The recovery is endless, because this kind of addiction never goes away. It stays with the person for the remainder of their life. And any anomaly in terms of mental or physical stress, coupled with availability of the drug, always puts an addict into a prime position to relapse.

The proliferation of the Oxycodone type medication began to amplify in the late 90s, as an effective painkiller. The Pharmaceutical companies were called to testify before Congress regarding the medication's safety. Despite having the knowledge that Oxycodone is very similar in molecular structure to Heroin and more study was necessary, the Pharmaceutical Executives lied through their teeth and said that addiction to the medication is rare and avoidable.

After all we shouldn't be that surprised. It was the Pharmaceutical giant Bayer, who over a century ago certified Heroin to be safe. It was sold in every Pharmacy for decades, until it was summarily pulled off the shelves due to its apparent addictive property.

That's right, the Pharmaceutical companies, their suppliers, and retailers put profit before the well being of the very people whom they claimed would avoid feeling the pain. The Pharmaceutical companies were very effective in their marketing technique. They went to every doctor, hospital, and pharmacy to tout the benefits of their medication and entice them to be prescribed for everything from headache, toothache, to recovery from surgery and cancer treatment.

But people became addicts, and in much greater numbers than the Congress or Pharmaceutical companies could foresee. The State Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency caught on to the early signs of this deadly trend and had competent attorneys lead successful cases to restrict these medications and contain the Opioid crisis.

The only problem was that the private Pharmaceutical companies have more money than the DEA or the State Department. So the Pharmaceutical companies began to recruit the most competent DEA attorneys and make them work against the very same cases the attorneys constructed for the government.

And this is where we find ourselves today. The Opioid Crisis has now reached Epidemic proportions, with over 15,000 Americans dead in 2015 due to prescription painkiller overdoses alone. We have over two million Americans who have been identified as having at least a degree of dependency on prescription painkillers. These are two million lives, each with a lifetime of recovery ahead of them... if they are lucky.

We need to act on this matter. We need to call our local elected officials to put pressure with our votes. We, as human beings, cannot stand idly by while the greedy Pharmaceutical companies extract profit at the expense of human life. This is a serious matter, and nobody is immune. Because the next time you go to a hospital for something minor, it may be you who receives a painkiller prescription.