News of increased prescription drug abuse in America and abroad may not surprise anybody. Most of us probably know somebody personally who has become addicted to a prescription medication. Prescription drugs are often cheaper, easier to acquire, and safer to consume than their illicit counterparts. There is, however, something that they have in common with drugs like heroine, cocaine, and methamphetamine; prescription drugs can be just as addictive.
The prescription drugs that are most often abused by addicts are usually prescribed as pain medication. One common reaction to the growing problem of prescription drug abuse is to crack-down and make it more difficult to acquire prescription drugs. This ignores the fact that pain itself is also a serious human problem, and medicating to fight real pain is a legitimate use of certain drugs. If we make it abundantly more difficult to acquire certain medications, then we also make it harder for legitimate pain patients to get the drugs they need.
Certain local jurisdictions as well as federal investigators have recently cracked down on doctors who prescribe pain medication. While there are certainly doctors out there who prescribe medications unscrupulously, and they should no doubt be dealt with under the law, there are also doctors who have stopped prescribing pain medication entirely, for fear of being labeled a -drug dealer’ by their own government. Fewer doctors prescribing pain medication means certain doctors will have more pain patients to deal with, which ostensibly spreads them thin and causes more mistakes.
Prescription drug abuse is a serious problem. Cracking down on access to medications is no way to fight drug abuse, and may even exacerbate the problem. The only way to help an addict fight their addiction is to treat the addiction itself instead of attempting to eradicate the drug. We need to strike a balance in order to fight prescription drug abuse without harming pain patients in the process.