Prescription Drug Use in the United States
In the United States the over prescription and abuse of prescription drugs has become a huge problem. In 2003, an estimated 3.4 billion prescriptions were filled in the United States alone. At the time, there were approximately 290 million people in America. Working out the math for this, that equates to 11.7 prescriptions per individual. Almost 1 prescription per month per individual. Our nation is in a drug crisis. And no, not an illegal drug crisis, a prescription drug crisis. It has come to the point to where it seems that people can not survive without prescription drugs. Sadly, America has become a prescription drug dependent nation.
Every year, more than 1.5 million people are hospitalized due to reactions from drugs. In
2007, there were approximately 27,000 unintentional prescription drug overdose deaths in the
United States. One death almost every 19 minutes. Death rates for unintentional drug overdoses have dramatically increased in recent years. A huge reasoning for this is doctors increased rate of prescribing a type of pain killing drug called opioid analgesics. Since 2003, more overdose deaths have happened because of opioid analgesics than heroine and cocaine combined.
According to “CDC Grand Rounds: Prescription Drug Overdoses- a U.S. Epidemic” For every unintentional overdose related to opioid analgesic, nine people are admitted for substance abuse treatment, 35 visit emergency departments, 161 report drug abuse or dependence, and 461 report nonmedical uses of opioid analgesics.
In 1997 the distribution of opioids through pharmaceutical supply was approximately 96 milligrams of opioids per person. From then to 2007, that number has increased over 600 percent to 700 milligrams per person. This is the equivalent of giving a person a normal five milligrams dose of Vicodin every four hours for three weeks. Nine million people in the United States report

long term medical use of opioids and roughly five million report nonmedical use. This is due to doctors increased want to treat patient pain better and abusers learning to exploit this sensitivity to patient pain. Of the nonmedical users using opioids, seventy-six report getting their drugs from somebody else’s prescription. The rest of the nonmedical users of opiods acquired the drugs from their own doctor and prescription. Furthermore, among the people who died from opiod overdose, a significant portion did not even have a prescription in their file for the opiod that killed them.
Among patients who are prescribed opioids 80 percent are prescribed low doses, less than one hundred mg dose per day, by a single doctor. Of this 80 percent, these people account for approximately 20 percent of all prescription drug overdoses. Another ten percent of patients seeing a single practitioner are prescribed high doses, doses greater than one hundred mg. This ten percent accounts for approximately forty percent of all prescription drug overdoses. The remaining ten percent of patients are patients who seek care from multiple practitioners and are prescribed high daily doses by each. This ten percent accounts for the last forty percent of all prescription drug overdoses.
Another reason for the high prescription rate is doctors failing to treat certain problems with nondrug treatments and being lax with their prescribing. According to worstpills.org, research has shown that most doctors now a days are quick to pull the prescription trigger. In a study, multiple doctors were given a clinical scenario with a patient complaining of insomnia.
Sixty five percent of the doctors recommended that the patient be treated with sleeping pills.
However, had the doctors been a little more thorough, they would have discovered that the patient was drinking coffee in the evening, and although they woke at four in the morning, they had actually already gotten seven hours of sleep by then. The study also showed that nurses were

more likely than doctors to delve further into the problem and were only one-third as likely as the doctors to decide on a prescription remedy than suggesting changes to their habits.
Obviously, things need to change. Our nation is in trouble. A good way to make a change is to better enforce current drug laws. We should have a database with everyones names and keep track of their medication history and flag those who have an excessive prescription history.
And then people with an excessive history should be more restricted on their prescriptions.
Along with doing this, we should restrict the production of drugs in general.
Our nation is in a crisis and if things don’t change, I believe there will be a day where the drug industry runs us completely and American citizens will rely only on them. However, with progressive steps and time, we can fix this problem and restore our nation.