What Caused the Opioid Epidemic? Would you be surprised if I told you that the United States had 50% more people die last year due to a drug epidemic than in car accidents? I heard this on a news podcast and was shocked to find this statistic to be true. This drug crisis is the opioid epidemic we are currently facing in our country that last year alone claimed 60,000 lives. This prompted me to ask, why are we having this epidemic? How could we be having such a massive amount of deaths each year and yet hear very little about it? How did it begin and why now is it a problem and was not in the past? What can we do now to stop the opioid epidemic? I do not know anything about this opioid epidemic other than the amount of people have died from
…show more content…
I decided to look into this book and ended up purchasing the ebook to read further about the epidemic. I focused on one chapter in particular which discussed Mexican drug cartels involvement in the epidemic. In “Dreamland” it also emphasizes the pharmaceutical companies involvement in marketing the opiate drugs as non-addictive and safe. The book talks about the Mexican drug cartels production of heroin and nearly all the heroin in the United States is coming from the cartels. The book talks about the pharmaceutical companies releasing the opiate drugs and how it made them mainstream causing many Americans to be addicted. The drug cartels saw this addiction as a business opportunity and started bringing in heroin and synthetic opiates into the United States for sale to those who were addicted and could not get the opiates through legal means. The chapter also describes the advanced distribution that the cartels use to sell their product to the public. The cartels paid off police, politicians, and judges to avoid legal trouble with their distribution. With the importation and sale of these opiate drugs cartels thrive off the money made due to the opioid epidemic.(Quinones,pg.78,2015) I think the chapter in this book is fascinating because it explains how the illegal drugs get into the country. This gave me a better understanding to how it is possible that without the prescription drugs people are still able to obtain these deadly
I decided to look into this book and ended up purchasing the ebook to read further about the epidemic. I focused on one chapter in particular which discussed Mexican drug cartels involvement in the epidemic. In “Dreamland” it also emphasizes the pharmaceutical companies involvement in marketing the opiate drugs as non-addictive and safe. The book talks about the Mexican drug cartels production of heroin and nearly all the heroin in the United States is coming from the cartels. The book talks about the pharmaceutical companies releasing the opiate drugs and how it made them mainstream causing many Americans to be addicted. The drug cartels saw this addiction as a business opportunity and started bringing in heroin and synthetic opiates into the United States for sale to those who were addicted and could not get the opiates through legal means. The chapter also describes the advanced distribution that the cartels use to sell their product to the public. The cartels paid off police, politicians, and judges to avoid legal trouble with their distribution. With the importation and sale of these opiate drugs cartels thrive off the money made due to the opioid epidemic.(Quinones,pg.78,2015) I think the chapter in this book is fascinating because it explains how the illegal drugs get into the country. This gave me a better understanding to how it is possible that without the prescription drugs people are still able to obtain these deadly