Prescription narcotics Essay -- essays research papers

The Need for Restrictions Why there should be stricter regulations on the availability of prescription narcoticsDespite efforts to decrease the number of deaths and overdoses colligate to narcotic medications, such as OxyContin, and minimize the number of heap illegally obtaining them, the measures that the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) in specific are taking are not enough. The literal interpretation of a narcotic is a drug that produces numbness or stupor often taken for pleasure or to reduce pain extensive persona can lead to addiction. Narcotics are normally prescription medications that are given to patients to help ease the constant pain cause by cancer or other long term illnesses. When one in 10 high school seniors reports abusing prescription painkillers, the DEA is obligated to protect our children and the public golosh says Karen P. Tandy administrator of the DEA(1). Tandy is saying that when the abuse of prescription pain medication is taking over that many an(prenominal) students the DEA must step in for the sake of future generations. there is a long process that not many average Americans know about that all pharmaceutical products, especially addictive medications have to go with before they reach home medicine cabinets. This process is called Diversion. It is an important chain like process that the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) have been using for years to look at where highly addictive drugs, like OxyContin, go and who they come into contact with. From the pharmaceutical company that literally make the product, to the drug wholesalers that sell the product, and then into the hands of doctors and pharmacies who prescribe and distri just nowe the medications. The purpose of diversion is to take the information and look for certain situations where drugs were lost, stolen, or illegally distributed and give proper punishment to those people. The problem of abusing prescription narcotics became perceptibly out of control in the 1990s. The problem lies in the fact that it is 2005 and the numbers of overdoses and deaths have been and are still rising at astonishing rates.An argument however, that many people have about advancing restrictions on OxyContin and other schedule 2 narcotics is that the needed process that one might have to go through and through in order to properly obtain the drug would be an invasion of privacy. Some believe that reportin... ...rsthe number of patients in motor vehicle crashes who are mender impaired, says John H. Burton, MD Medical Director for Maine Emergency Medical Services.(3)To think that the problem of abusing any kind of drug would just disappear with one radical is naive and absurdly optimistic. However, to think that all the DEA is doing right now to prevent harmfully addictive and destructive medications is enough is plain ignorant. The DEA has made substantial come toward making OxyContin and other prescribed narcotics less available for abusers. But first hand accounts and shocking statistics prove that these measures are clearly not enough. It is true and exit always be true that free will is a legitimate part of this equation. The abuse of any kind of drug is almost guaranteed to be display at all times no matter how hard the government tries. If a person wants it they will have it. The fact also remains that people with addictions cannot control themselves or their addictions, thats why it is called an addiction. Therefore making it the partial obligation of the DEA and the government to not only recognize this desperate need for restrictions but do something more about it.