Do More Potent Pain Killers Signal Need for Drug Education Classes?

Addiction is a terrible thing. I can guarantee you not one person ever begins to take a substance or drug with the hope that they become addicted. Care to argue? Would you agree that addiction to prescription medication is reaching epidemic proportions? Would you agree that addiction to prescription painkillers is rampant? To argue against the last two questions you would be hard-pressed to find data to support your claim. These medications are so highly-addictive that you have to be extremely cognizant of the possibility for addiction no matter what your previous experience with drugs or alcohol was. Pain, almost exclusively (but not completely) has a limited time-frame for your level of discomfort. There are so few exceptions to this rule that try and convince yourself that you still need those meds six months after surgery (for purposes other than pain relief) hold no water! So why do we need stronger painkillers? I just can’t understand how drug companies can continue to supply the public with increasingly strong and addictive drugs. I am worried the U.S. government is too lax about controlling addictive pain medications. The United States consumes 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone and 83 percent of its oxycodone, according to a 2008 study by the International Narcotics Control Board. Could there be a loophole to provide prescription pain killers an avenue for abuse? The federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 puts fewer controls on combination pills containing hydrocodone and another painkiller than it does on the equivalent oxycodone products. One big question is how many times should you be able to refill a prescription? A Vicodin prescription can be refilled five times, for example, while a Percocet prescription can only be filled once. Government Funds at Work The DEA and FDA have been studying whether to close this loophole since 1999 but have made no decision. Should Congress extend its powers yet again and engage in tight agency controls? This very subject is on the table right now! This is a problem that is fundamentally an oversupply problem. The FDA has kind of opened the floodgates, and they refuse to recognize the mistakes made in the past. Pure hydrocodone falls into the stricter drug-control category than hydrocodone-acetaminophen medications, meaning patients would have to go to their doctors for a new prescription each time they needed more pills. But that’s no guarantee against abuse, noting that dozens of unscrupulous doctors have been caught chu ing out prescriptions in so-called “pill mills.” Ponder This Do you believe doctors are unscrupulous enough to continue medication primarily for their own personal benefit of future fees? Believe me when I say that I firmly believe in strong pain medication. I have suffered intense physical pain, and if not for medicatio I would have been absolutely miserable for days, for weeks. Fortunately I never became addicted to these medications. Of course I think I had morphine once and the next closest I came to a heavy-duty pain medication was Tylanol and Codeine (also known as Tylenol 3). I am ever-so-fortunate to have a low tolerance for pain medication so a few ibuprofen will curb virtually all of my pain needs.