Prescription Drug Abuse

One in three Americans are prescribed opioids from their doctor. Once someone is prescribed a medication and take it daily, as told to do so by the doctor, it is extremely easy to become dependent on the pills. Dependency on a drug means that the body physically craves it and may experience withdrawals when the prescription is stopped. Addiction characterizes as a mental need for the drug. The behavior changes and abusing the medication will begin.

The Medication Policy and procedure and Mars Handbook covers assessment of individuals’ needs, administering, storage, recording and disposal of medicines including their effects and potential side effects

If you notice a strange amount of bottles or empty tablet packets, that can be a serious indication of abuse. Teens tend to be careless with the evidence from cough medicine because they think parents are not aware. That's why it is so important for parents to be informed.

) Discuss the public health impact of opioid misuse and abuse, including costs related to healthcare and criminal justice costs. Opioid drugs are valuable medications in treating acute and chronic pain that cannot be managed with nonopioid therapy, but inappropriate prescribing can cause serious harm. Taking higher doses or a combination of short-acting and long-acting opioids are likely to be abused and can also cause serious dose-related adverse effects that can include death. Opioid abuse affects the community and families in some way. It can lead missed work and sometimes it can be a problem keeping a job. Therefore, it is important that we obtain medication history to give us a picture of the patient pain medication history. While opioid

Although there are many things contributing to the expanding prescription drug abuse problem, there are also many ways to fix it. To prevent people from obtaining these drugs from home medicine cabinets, locking up the medicine cabinet or simply locking up prescription drugs elsewhere would prevent those searching for them from finding them. Another solution to this problem is to host Drug Take-Back events. In May 2011, the US Drug Enforcement Administration sponsored its second National Prescription Drug Take-Back event and collected more than 188 tons of unwanted or expired medications from 5,361 designated disposal sites around the country (“Is Substance” 1). Michele Leonhard, a DEA administrator who was involved in the planning of this event, commented, "With the support and hard work

Millions of people throughout the world are taking drugs on a daily basis. If you were to ask someone why they take prescription drugs, most people would be taking them for the right reason. However, it’s estimated that twenty percent of people in the United States alone have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons.1 Prescription drug abuse is a serious and growing problem that often goes unnoticed. Abusing these drugs can often lead to addiction and even death. You can develop an addiction to certain drugs that may include: narcotic painkillers, sedatives, tranquilizers, and stimulants.1 Prescription drugs are the most common abused category of drugs, right next to marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and

Appalachia is a cultural, highland region of the southeastern US, containing the Appalachian Mountains, extending from Alabama up to Pennsylvania (CDC, 2010). Given its hallmark high poverty, low educational attainment and geographic isolation, the Appalachian region is a vulnerable priority population at a heightened risk for prescription drug abuse (CDC, 2010). As previously alluded to, the burden of opioid abuse and overdose deaths is substantially higher in Appalachia than other areas of the U.S. Since 1996, an increasing number of programs have provided the opioid antagonist naloxone hydrochloride, the method of choice to reverse the potentially fatal respiratory depression caused by overdose of heroin and other opioids (CDC, 2010). Community coalitions, law enforcement, concerned friends, families and good Samaritans alike have each asserted that naloxone’s virtually untapped potential to save lives is enormous. Adding further standing, naloxone is on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) model list of essential medicines and is described as, "a safe drug with a low risk of serious side effects" and that "any adult capable of learning basic life support can also learn to recognize an opioid overdose, and administer naloxone in time to save lives." Another benefit is that naloxone is extremely cheap; available at less than $2 a dose in many countries

Prescription drugs are influencing kids in the high schools of California, causing many negative effects in the body of kids, unlike other cities in the U.S and Europe where the number of reported cases are lower. In Southern California the use of prescription drugs has skyrocketed, In 2014 the number of cases involving the prescription drug opioid, a popular pain killer, consisted of 11,638 as opposed to 5,753 cases in 2014 according to the California Department of Public Health. The number of cases has more than doubled in the past years and there are many programs that are being integrated into the school that is trying to prevent the increase of

es and non-prescription drug abuse among minors with the misguided insight that their use is safer than the illegal drugs. Through an online survey, the researchers collect data on the issue and correlate with specific variables such as community stigma, apparent risk and the access to the drugs. The authors discover a positive correlation. This study will aid in gaining an in-depth understanding of the exact nature of relation between community stigma, apparent risk and the access to the drugs to drug abuse in the society. It will serve as viable literature in identifying the various ways and procedures to limit and observe the access of these drugs to adolescents. 2. Goebel, J. R., Compton, P., Zubkoff, L., Lanto, A., Asch, S. M., Sherbourne,

Prescription drug abuse has become a major epidemic across the globe, shattering and affecting many lives of young teenagers. Many people think that prescription drugs are safer and less addictive than “street drugs.” After all, these are drugs that moms, dads, and even kids brothers and sisters use. The dangers are not easily seen, but the future of our youth will soon be in severe danger if the problem is not addressed,it will continue to get worse if action is not taken soon. Prescription drugs are only supposed to be consumed by patients who have been examined and have a medical report by a professional, more and more teens are turning to the family’s medicine cabinet to “get high” but what they are

Prescription pain abuse is one of the fastest growing addictions in the country. Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin have replaced some street drugs. I think that the abuse is the patient's fault but in a way it is also the doctor’s fault. The doctor’s are the ones to prescribe the medicine.

For this week’s essay, my topic is prescription drugs, drug addiction, etc. Prescription drugs are just as bad as illegal drugs in my opinion. Once hooked on them a person can possibly die, be scarred for life, or hurt their brains which could affect the way they live. Having an addiction controls you and when you are controlled by something as strong as some prescription drugs, your life is in danger. I think one of the main problems is that doctors give these medicines out to easily. They aren’t cautious enough to who they give them to. The more patients are prescribed the more they will feel they cannot lie without them and get hooked on

Those who abuse prescription drugs put themselves at a much higher risk for cardiovascular and respiratory failure, seizures, stroke, and other physical and mental health problems to name a few. The health problem outlined in this paper is the adverse reaction of non-prescription drugs with alcohol or other illicit drugs among college students, which puts them at increased risk for the previous stated health problems. This paper does not focus on one particular prescription drug, but a number of common drugs that are readily available to the general student

Even though people need their prescriptions, the abuse of them is getting out of control and we need to find a way to regulate it better,because it can destroy a family, cause some to become addicted, or even kill them. Prescription drugs are no joke, they can be worse than illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and even heroin. The only difference is a doctor can prescribe these types of drugs. The problem we run into with prescription drugs is there is not enough being done to keep the person from becoming addicted or them selling to others. In 2007 2.5 million Americans abused just painkillers (Drug free world). That is not even including the other two types. Now it is starting to affect teens, one out of every ten teenagers admit to abusing a prescribed drug(Drug-free world).

To illustrate the magnitude of the research problem and provide a frame of reference, this section begins with a brief overview of the increased use of pharmaceuticals and prescription drug abuse in the US. The section continues with the relationship between illicit drugs and prescriptions, adolescents’ abuse, personal and social factors; then concludes with the theoretical approach. The Social-Ecological Theory, will be applied in researching prescription drug abuse, possible influences and protective factors in adolescents in relation to prescription drug abuse, to develop focused intervention strategies and educational programs for this population, similar to other substances such as tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.