Solution
Rimsha answered on
Oct 20 2021
Running Head: PHARMACEUTICAL POLITICS AND POLICY 1
PHARMACEUTICAL POLITICS AND POLICY 13
HLST 3015: PHARMACEUTICAL POLITICS AND POLICY
ASSIGNMENT 2
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Critical Analysis of the Policy Challenges faced due to Opioid Crisis 3
Development of Opioid Consumption as Medicine Turned into Crisis 3
History of Occu
ence of Opioid Epidemic since Prescribing Opioid Medically 4
Rising Concern in Public about this Crisis and Role played by Government in Controlling It 5
Factors resulting in Failure of Policies and Strategies in Controlling Opioid Crisis 5
Wrong Strategies and Methods adopted by Government in Controlling Opioid Crisis Increasing Drug Consumption 8
Conclusion 9
Bibliography 11
Introduction
Opioid crisis is one of the most challenging issues, which pharmaceutical organizations along with other healthcare organizations are facing. Prescribing opioid to cu
the pain often resulted in the opioid addiction. Various measures have been taken by the government to control this issue, which resulted in a big failure. Disorders and deaths due to opioid overdose pose the burden on most of the countries. All the past policies adopted by the government failed to provide the desirable outcome.
Large-scale interventions have been taken to control the disease, yet it failed to make any recognizable change. It is an urgency to make the policy and laid down necessary strategies to control the opioid abuse and misuse. Opioid crisis seems superficial issue; yet it has formed deep roots in the society, presenting challenges for the pharmaceutical policies. Although opioid is necessary for relieving pain, nevertheless, it has become an addiction, thus, resulting in opioid crisis.
Critical Analysis of the Policy Challenges faced due to Opioid Crisis
Development of Opioid Consumption as Medicine Turned into Crisis
As mentioned by Whitmore et al. (2019), in the late 1990s, the pharmaceutical industry gives assurance to the medical community that prescribing the opioid as a pain reliever is a safe treatment for the patients. As an outcome of this assurance, there was greater rates of prescription of opioid as a pain reliever to the patients. Increased in the prescription of the opioid medication resulted in the widespread misuse of both prescribed and non-prescribed opioids.
As a result, people become addictive of the disease. The assurance given to the pharmaceutical company led to widespread dispersal of medicine and become easy to reach, and misuse of the medication onset, before the fact had been established that opioid-based pain reliever is highly addictive in nature. This led to the increase in the opioid overdose rates. As mentioned by Volkow and Collins (2017), opioid overdose rates keep increasing since the excessive prescription of the medication.
In year 2017, around 47,000 people died in America due to opioid overdose, which includes the prescription opioids, heroin, manufactured fentanyl, and powerful synthetic opioid. Roughly, around 1.7 million people have been estimated in the country to be suffered from substance abuse related to prescribed opioid pain relievers and around 652,000 suffered from heroin use.
History of Occu
ence of Opioid Epidemic since Prescribing Opioid Medically
As stated by Vashishtha, Mittal and We
(2017), deaths due to drug overdose continue to increase in the United States. From 1999 to 2017, there are more than 700,000 cases of deaths due to drug overdose. On an average, 130 Americans die due to opioid overdose per day. Opioid overdose becomes the opioid epidemic in the country. Since 1990s, the misuse and abuse of the prescribed and illicit drugs has become three folds. This resulted in generation of three waves of opioid overdose deaths. The first wave of opioid overdose began in 1990s, when there is sudden increase in prescription of the opioids.
There was very high increase in consumption of methadone and semi-synthetic as well as natural opioid. As noted by Holton, White and McCarty (2018), the second wave of the death due to opioid overdose began in 2010 with rapid increase in consumption of heroin. The third wave of the overdose death began in 2013, with significant increase in consumption of synthetic opioids especially illicitly manufactures fentanyl (IMF). This drug can be found in combination with heroin, cocaine and counterfeit pills. The fighting of the opioid has become main aim of all the governments in the world, as they all are facing burden of the opioid crisis. This situation affects economically as well as politically.
Rising Concern in Public about this Crisis and Role played by Government in Controlling It
The opioid crisis has become public health crisis when there is increase in the misuse and abuse of the prescription as well as increase in the cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome due to addiction of opioid during pregnancy. As suggested by Epstein, Heilig and Shaham (2018), the increase in use of injections for consumption of drug led to the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV, and Hepatitis C. As mentioned by Salmond and Allread (2019), over the period of 30 and 40 years of epidemic, various public health approaches had been implemented by the government to cu
this public health emergency.
From the perspective of public health, focus was made on prevention and evidence-based interventions to reduce the risk of opioid addiction. Despite of the various interventions, there had been massive failure in getting the desired outcome. As mentioned by El-Sabawi (2018), United States policymakers have made distance from the policies of the past and formulated...