Hello guys, it’s your girl Blondie signing in, In order to understand the drug problem in the United States you must first know its history. According to the Harvard X YouTube channel narrated by Andrew Kolodny, MD Co Director, of Opioid Policy Research. The United States suffered several opioid epidemic throughout its history. First we must examine where opioids originated. Opioids are drugs that have been used for centuries Opioids have been used for spiritual, medical and recreational purposes. Opioids are drugs that provide an effective pain relief and it also produce a euphoria, a feeling of intense of excitement and happiness.
Opioids comes from opium. About two hundred years ago a German chemist found a way to isolate sap from the opium plant, which later was developed into morphine. Morphine than made its way into many different medical products during the 1800’s. Morphine was used to treat the soldiers injured in the Civil War. Morphine became very plentiful during this period. Housewives could obtain morphine through their general stores or prescribed through their doctors. Solders and private citizens were becoming addicted to the drug, this is when the United Stated experienced its first drug epidemic.
The medical community noticed the morphine epidemic, with the collaboration of the Bayer Corporation heroin was developed to help improve the morphine problem. Unfortunately, it created a greater problem. In the early 1900’s America’s immigrants whose parents came from Europe settled in New York were becoming gangsters. These young white Americans were purchasing pharmaceutical grade heroin tablets for non-medical reasons. They were crushing up the tablets and snorting them. Around 1914 the problem once again became an epidemic. The government intervene and classified heroin as a narcotics and it became against the law to purchase without a prescription.
The next opioids epidemic occurred after World War II. This time it’s affecting nonwhite Americans in the inter city. Because the heroin is being black marketed, the drug is cut so many times that an individual has to inject it directly into their body in order to feel the effects. So this becomes an injection heroin use epidemic that hits low income nonwhite very hard. This happens in the 1970’s.
The CDC (Center for Disease Control Prevention) has been very clear about the cause of our current opioid addiction epidemic. What the CDC has shown is that as prescriptions for opioids began to increase rapidly during the 1990’s, the prescribing went up which led to parallel increases in the rate of addiction and overdue deaths. So the CDC is saying that inadvertently the medical community was over prescribing opioids. The medical community claims they were brain washed by the pharmaceutical companies into thinking that opioids weren’t as dangerous as earlier reported. This led to the current epidemic we are experiencing today.
We have only scratched the surface of the United States so call war on drugs. We on the street, the addicts, and the imprisoned has always asked one question. How did the drugs get here in the first place? It took big money to bring drugs to our borders. Who came before the pusher, who sold to the addict? Whose pockets were greased to turn a blind eye? Something to think about.
Call someone, text someone, give a mental hug. Until tomorrow.
Blondie