By: Nadia Agyepong
Society today has made fitting in more relevant than some of the more important things in life. People that struggle with prescription drug abuse are often affected by social norms. They do it to fit in, or be cool, even to study harder, or to change their appearance. Concerned citizens have turned to the Government to help with this problem stating that prescription drug abuse is more deadly than drugs being circulated in the streets. It has become so serious that drug related deaths are now second biggest accidental death after car crashes. Some people are blaming pain clinics calling them legal drug dealers. Some say it stems from greed, others say the providers of the medication just don’t care. Either way the president has decided to officially step in with a plan in hopes of helping millions of Americans dealing with this problem. Tuesday was the first time president Obama revealed his plan to help tackle this issue and hopefully reduce the amount of deaths the rate. The plan aims to ensure that certain drugs are used for what they are suppose to be used for and nothing else the president wants to cut down on the misuse of medication without restricting access to it. The rate in which substance abuse has increased has proved to be alarming. It has been the cause of many injuries and even deaths. Obama went into further detail about what his plans are to deal with the prescription drug abuse problem. One of the main drugs is Opioids, which is a synthetic version of opium that is used to treat moderate and severe pain. Has been among the causes of deaths in this battle of prescription overdose Obama’s plan includes a government wide approach to reduce drug abuse by creating a drug prevention and treatment program that will start 2012. IT is the Obama administrations hope that this program will lessen the burden of this epidemic and reduce such anxiety for family’s communities and workforces.
The strategy is to educate the medical community. They want to start featuring ads on TV that will bring awareness of the situation to Americans. They also want to strictly enforce rules in the medical field that may not have been enforced before and give better training to law enforcement. Drug companies will not be asked to donate money to this effort. Obama wants to increase awareness on things like disposal methods for unused medication, the proper way to use prescription drugs and increasing prescription drug monitoring programs which will be enforced in all fifty states. He hopes to reduce this by fifteen percent. They have also ordered the Food and drug administration to properly provide training for physicians. Although the document that issues this is being written by drug makers FDA will of curse approve it. Johnson and Johnsons are among the long lists of drugs that need new guidelines.