The Historic Battle Against Drug Addiction

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Throughout history people have used and abused drugs and alcohol in various forms. There has been drug abuse as far back as there has been availability of substances to change the way people feel.

People throughout history have used drugs and alcohol for medicine, recreation, and even ritualistic reasons. There is always a segment of the population that will abuse them. The abuse of illegal drugs has always reached across race, gender, and social-economic status.

There have been many attempts at ending illegal drug abuse by the authorities but to no avail. To add to the centuries old problem, people are now abusing prescription drugs as well – which are technically legal.

There are many reasons that prescription drugs like OxyContin, Xanax, and Vicodin are being so widely abused.  One reason is the ease of acquiring prescription drugs. Our society is eating unhealthier foods and more sedentary than ever before. Additionally, there is a growing dependence on medical remedies,  which leads to doctors prescribing more drugs than ever before.  People have become increasingly accustomed to taking medicine for even the tiniest of ailments. This mindset lends itself to gradual addiction to medications which can lead to devastating overdoses to drugs like Opana .

A Sweeping and Widespread Problem

There are readily accessible online pharmacies that  provide prescription drugs without a prescription.   Unfortunately, there is no one person to blame for this problem. Not every person that requests a pain pill from their doctor seeks to abuse them, and not every doctor that writes a prescription for narcotics is a part of a prescription drug ring. In most cases people are truly in pain and doctors are simply doing their jobs, treating their patients.

According to the NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), in 2009, 16 million Americans took prescription drugs for non-medical reasons starting at as young as 12 years old.

Recently in Los Angles, police stopped an OxyContin ring run out of a medical clinic that sold an estimated 25 million dollars worth of pills on the street. Doctors were  paying patients to use their insurance numbers, writing OxyContin prescriptions,while others were filling them for very cheap and selling the pills for significant profits. There was a total of ten people arrested in this insurance fraud and drug dealing ring and among them were the doctors who were writing the prescriptions.