Sydney Schmidt

HLTH 1050

Research Paper

Global Opioid Use

Worldwide, there are opioid users who cannot stop using due to the addictive chemicals

in opioids. Prescription of opioids too often leads to addiction and epidemics. Opioids are a drug

class made from opium. Opium is derived from the poppy plant. Some types of opium are legal

and may be prescribed by a doctor post procedure for intense pain or even as a pain treatment for

cancer patients. These include oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, and others. These

medications can be helpful, unless they are abused. Illegal types of opioids include heroin and

illicit fentanyl. These are known as street drugs and are unfortunately often laced into other

recreational drugs. Opioid addiction is a serious problem and is even classified as a disorder:

Opioid Use Disorder.

Prolonged opioid use can lead to addiction and even overdose. The longer a patient takes

an opioid prescription, the higher the chance is that they become addicted. Opioids are so

dangerous and unpredictable, that the United States government banned the distribution of

almost all of them in 1914. Heroin was still being used after this, but not nearly as much. That

was up until the 1990s. Many pharmaceutical companies began to market all types of opioids.

They claimed they would treat chronic and acute pain and carried little chance of addiction. The

most well known company of this time was Purdue Pharma. They created OxyContin. These

companies continued their extreme advertising of opioids, spending approximately $880 million

on marketing from 2006-2015. This was about 220 times more money than organizations trying

to limit opioid use spent. There was a lack of regulation in the industry and many doctors were
very concerned that their patients were struggling with severe pain, so opioid prescriptions

became the answer. Opioid use in the United states quadrupled from 1999-2014. The most

prescriptions prescribed in that time were 250 million in one year.

Many are working to ensure that this American epidemic does not turn into a global

epidemic. Although, this will require a great deal of effort. Addicted individuals must be

effectively treated and pharmaceutical companies must be stopped from marketing these

dangerous drugs simply for their benefit. We could ban profit seeking companies from selling

opioids for prolonged use at home, but that may be a stretch. Another solution would be to place

a ban on branding. This would include requiring pharmacies to only sell generic drugs or stop the

pharmaceutical companies from advertising. These are both solutions that would take a lengthy

amount of time to kick in, and even then, we don’t know if they’ll work.

In many places around the world, there has been a spike in overdoses and mortality in

those who use opioids. These places include multiple countries in North America, the United

Kingdom, Australia, Mexico and countries in Eastern Europe. In the last 30 years, opioid use has

increased exponentially. Still, the biggest epidemic lies in the United States. About 2.5 million

people in the U.S. struggle with opioid use disorder. To determine why people use opioids, an

organization interviewed those who use opioids with a semi-structured qualitative interviewing

process. The results of these interviews showed that most opioid use is present in rural areas.

This is due to lack of social and networking opportunities, and limited employment and

healthcare resources. Professional stakeholders such as doctors, nurses, and specialists were also

interviewed in a rural area in Illinois, where opioid use is rampant. The stakeholders expressed

stress surrounding unruly drug seekers and having to call law enforcement and EMS to address

domestic violence, overdose, and fatal events so often.

 Although some individuals do have a quality that predisposes them to drug dependency,

Becker proposed that, “the existence of a particular drug use behavior resulted from a series of

social engagements that enabled an individual to assign meaning to the behavior” (Becker 1953).

This means that those who are using drugs associate the action with a meaning. This could be

something like appearing cooler around peers or friends. Along with this, there are other reasons

people may use drugs. These include inability to access proper treatment, peer influence or peer

pressure, and to avoid withdrawals.

In the study, 52 individuals participated. Of these participants, 22 were drug users and 30

were professional stakeholders. 14 of the drug users were men and eight were women. Twenty of

the users were black and two were white. The stakeholder participants were individuals

employed at healthcare facilities, hospitals, drug treatment facilities, law enforcement offices,

health departments, community and faith-based organizations, legal and court systems, and EMS.

In total there were four themes that showed in response to the drug users’ reasoning for

continuing drug use. The first one was “sensation‐seeking and achievement of a psychic, bodily,

or sexual "high"”. The second being “facilitating or enhancing social and romantic

relationships.” Third was “recognizing, negotiating, and addressing physical pain.” And finally

the fourth was “coping with difficult social circumstances and environmental stressors” (Ezell,

Olson, Walters, Friedman, Ouellet, Pho, 2022). Ultimately, these drug users aim to feel sensation,

a high of some sort, connections, pain relief, and emotional relief. These can be categorized into

somatic, psychosocial, sensory, and relational explanations. One user said, “When I get high, I do

not think about my problems. I'm able to distract myself. I'm not emotional. Whenever I'm not

high, I'm just a ball of nerves and all I do is think about my kids and my wife and everything that

I have destroyed; that I tore my castle down brick‐by‐brick, over a period of nine years.”
 All in all, the opioid epidemic is running rampant globally, and especially in America.

Due to the addiction rate of opioids, they should not be prescribed at the rate they are right now.

The prescription of opioids is ruining families, lives, dreams, and our society. There is a

desperate need for a call to action in the opioid and pharmaceutical industry to put a stop to the

opioid epidemic. We cannot continue like this simply because big companies are making money.

Works Cited

Ezell, Jerel M., et al. “A Sociology of Empathy and Shared Understandings: Contextualizing

Beliefs and Attitudes on Why People Use Opioids.” Rural Sociology, vol. 87, no.

3, Sept. 2022, pp. 1053–87. EBSCOhost,

https://doi-org.libprox1.slcc.edu/10.1111/ruso.12440.

Humphreys, Keith, et al. “Opioids of the Masses: Stopping an American Epidemic from Going

Global.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 97, no. 3, May 2018, pp. 118–29. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edshol&AN=edshol.hein.journ

als.fora97.63&site=eds-live&scope=site.