Um,dear friends who are enthusiastic and care about the policies of the USA , I'd love to ask something about the position of the drug control policies.
That was because I had just seen a TV show presented by hulu called the Dopesick , firstly I would love to say that it was quite a meaningful and educative TV show I had ever seen,especially for the freshmen who are going to enter the pharmaceutical field , quite shocked by the sins of the Sackler family and feeling pity about the misery of oxycontin abusers , this TV show desicively modeled my values . Still, words failed to express my honer and gratitude to the producers of the TV show.
However as the TV shows the opioid drugs make the whole country became a heaven for the drugsters, it is quitely frighting! Just as what the We medias shows that the USA is so weak in controlling the drug abuse without the help of China.I am still wondering whether there exsited some exaggerate descriptions just as what the medias often do here in China? What is the truth about the USA's drug control policies?
Right now, the biggest drug issue in the US is opioids. For a long time, legitimate medical personnel were heavily overprescribing due to pressure from the drug manufacturers (this has resulted in a massive lawsuit that the US Supreme Court just refused to block), and this overprescribing resulted in widespread addiction. The primary attempt to fight this involved aggressive rules on pharmacies and doctors to cut off the source of legitimate opioids, which
has greatly reduced the increase in addiction. However, the large number of existing addicts have turned to the illegal black market.
This is a great problem because, unlike legitimate drugs for the prescription market, drugs on the black market very rarely contain what they say they do. The vast majority of the "heroin" or "oxycotin" you buy on the illegal market is either adulterated or entirely composed of fentanyl derivatives. Fentanyl can be illegally imported in massive quantities from China with relative ease, and is so incredibly potent (to the point where the lethal dosage is on par with
chemical weapons) that it is incredibly easy for a careless distributor or one working with shoddy equipment to compound mixtures that are lethally potent. It is worth noting that when it is mixed to correct doses by trained professionals in proper clinical settings, Fentanyl is basically a wonder drug - a highly effective painkiller that carries a fairly low addiction risk when used carefully. It is particularly popular with pediatric doctors because the potency allows it to be compounded into candies and such that a child in severe pain is more likely to accept than a pill or shot.
And yeah, it's bad. Really bad. At least a dozen, possibly two, people that I know have been cut down by overdoses in the last five years. And that's only the people that I have some loose contact with. If you extend it to all the people I used to know but have fallen out of contact with, I am certain that the number will grow far higher.