Opioids and the War Against Drugs in America – 20 Years Later
The highly under-published problem of opioid prescription drug abuse actually is one of the main causes of our ongoing drug war. This drug war is currently being waged locally and nearby is reaching fever pitches in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Opioid painkillers are a class of psychoactive substances that are mainly used for pain management and include codeine, hydrocodone, and oxycodone (among others).
Today, the extreme consumption of prescription opioids greatly surpasses that of any of our previous drug crises by all measures and accounts, including heroin in the 1960s and 1970s, and crack cocaine in the 1980s and 1990s.…