The issue of drug abuse and addiction in the United States has become much more relevant in the past few years. Drugs and the drug crisis were for the longest time, something which was limited geographically, socially and racially. Which is to say that drugs were only a “problem” in the inner city. In the 1980s, this was symbolized by the so-called crack epidemic which ravaged the poorer and most fragile communities in the country. The issue of drug abuse in the United States is important because of how much it impacts the lives of people in all different ways and this problem seems to be increasing. Society must act to save these people in order to improve their lives and build strong communities for the future.
More recently drugs have crossed society from being a “minority” or a poor person problem to bring one of the major issues with many different kinds of people from many different income levels, and this is large because of one factor: opioid painkillers. The growth in addiction rates across the country have been skyrocketing in the past ten or fifteen years, and it has been largely connected to the abuse of prescription painkillers (Compton and Volkow, 2005). Prescription painkillers are easy to get, relatively cheap and something which can start with legal use for a legitimate injury or disease. The downside is that they're incredibly easy to get addicted to and something which can lead one’s life to spiral quickly out of control.
Recently, there has been quite a spike in cases of white middle-class individuals becoming dependent on and dying of heroin overdoses (Kuehn, 2014). The connection between heroin and painkillers is a clear one and something which authorities have been attempting to get under control. Both substances are opioids and people, which no longer have access to painkillers “graduate” to be able to get their fix. People who become dependent on prescription painkillers usually start using them legally after they receive them for a legitimate reason. Later they can lose access to them either because their prescription runs out and they are no longer able to get them legally or because they can’t find someone to write them prescriptions. The connection of opioid painkillers and the attendant increase in heroin abuse and dependence has very deep implications of the great increase of the prescription on former patients and society. Opioids became a much more popular method of treating pain starting in the 1990s, and this has largely been connected to what seems to have been this unimaginable explosion in cases of abuse and addiction of both painkillers and heroin (Joransson, 2000). I think it is not controversial to say that maybe this was not the best course for doctors to have taken in retrospect
Another drug which has become much more popular and prevalent recently is methamphetamines or crystal meth. Meth is such a popular drug because much like painkillers they are cheap and easy to acquire, and they are in large supply from both domestic and international sources. (DEA, 2014) In 2012 according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1.2 million people use meth and 440,000 people had reported using it in the past month (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2013). This does not seem like a very large number, but given all of the factors in is something which we must carefully monitor in the future. The Mexican cartels are very much in the methamphetamine trade, and they have a much larger reach in states closest to the border in the American Southwest. Methamphetamine dependence is a worrying trend, especially among lower economic status individuals because of its deleterious health effects and it strong social implications.
The United States in the past decades has seen a marked increase in the prevalence of drug abuse, especially of opioid painkillers and methamphetamines. The issue with abuse and dependence of painkillers is largely connected to how easy it is to get them for legitimate purposes. What is worrying ultimately is the connection between painkillers and heroin use, which has grown greatly in the US among whites in the past few years. Furthermore, the use of methamphetamines although not very widespread is something which we must pay close attention to given the massive negative health risks of using it.
Drug abuse is a major problem all over the country, and it is also something which reflects not only on individuals or the larger trends in the society. It also shows that people, when they feel like they have nothing to lose and are hopeless, will resort to using drugs as a method of making themselves feel better. Drug abuse is a social problem and something which recently has finally become much more widespread and visible leaving the ghetto and entering suburbia. People are intrinsically valuable, and all drugs do is destroy people. Institutions must act to solve this crisis because given the environmental conditions, it is very hard to foresee a situation where this problem will get better in any way if not for government intervention and not only on a law enforcement level but on social, community, family and educational efforts. This will be the only solution to the current problem of drug abuse that is currently facing this country today.
References
Compton, W. M., & Volkow, N. D. (2006). Major increases in opioid analgesic abuse in the United States: concerns and strategies. Drug and alcohol dependence, 81(2), 103-107.
Drug Enforcement Administration. (2014). National drug threat assessment summary 2014. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration; 2015. Pub. no. DEA-DCT-DIR-002–15.
Joranson, D. E., Ryan, K. M., Gilson, A. M., & Dahl, J. L. (2000). Trends in medical use and abuse of opioid analgesics. Jama, 283(13), 1710-1714.
Kuehn, Bridget M. Driven by prescription drug abuse, heroin use increases among suburban and rural whites. JAMA 312.2 (2014): 118-119.
National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2013). What is the scope of methamphetamine abuse in the United States? Retrieved June 05, 2016, from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/methamphetamine/what-scope-methamphetamine-abuse-in-united-states
