The sole purpose of this essay is to analyze pharmaceutical drug abuse within the United States and Canada. For the reason that I am unaware of the ‘war on drugs’ within Canada and want to find similarities and differences within statistics of pharmaceutical drug abusers within each nation.
What is pharmaceutical drug abuse? It is when you ‘abuse’ a medication that was received from a legal doctor, essentially misusing it for other purposes such as reducing side effects from another drug, getting high from the drug, or taking the prescription to an excessive extent. When you are abusing prescription drugs, you are taking the medication in a sense that will alter your perception, mood or other physical factors, basically to get a ‘high’ off …show more content…
Well according to the NIH, “Prescription and OTC drugs may be abused in one or more of the following ways: Taking a medication that has been prescribed for somebody else. Unaware of the dangers of sharing medications, people often unknowingly contribute to this form of abuse by sharing their unused pain relievers with their family members.” Since the common misconception that prescription drugs are ‘safer’ than ‘illicit’ drugs you may find on the street, people will assume that it is safe to ‘hand-out’ their prescriptions to family and friends, since their personal doctor felt it was best for the individual (person handing out prescription drugs). Also, in Canada, the reasons pertaining to initial prescription drug abuse are the same in the United States, but according to the government of Canada, teenagers may abuse prescription drugs because they are ‘legal’, which creates a sense of security or the notion that it is alright to take, rather than using (taking) ‘illicit’ (illegal) drugs such as Marijuana and …show more content…
The campaign began in 2014 and collected a total of 390 tons, and from this last campaign, they broke the record 620 tons of unused and expired medications (Partnership for a Drug Free Canada, 2016). The overall effect from this campaign was pretty significant, “61% of parents exposed to the campaign said they had spoken specifically to their kids about the risk of misusing prescription drugs to get high, compared to 42 per cent of parents who hadn’t been exposed to the campaign. As a result – overall, 61 per cent of kids believe misusing prescription drugs to get high is a very risky practice.” (Partnership for a Drug Free Canada, 2016). Appropriately, prescription drug use among teens has statistically shown that its popularity among youths is declining: (2009 = 20%, 2011 = 17%, 2013 = 14%, 2015 = 12%) […] which can be attributed in part to an increased public awareness of the problem of prescription drug misuse [PDFC campaign] (Partnership for a Drug Free Canada,
What is pharmaceutical drug abuse? It is when you ‘abuse’ a medication that was received from a legal doctor, essentially misusing it for other purposes such as reducing side effects from another drug, getting high from the drug, or taking the prescription to an excessive extent. When you are abusing prescription drugs, you are taking the medication in a sense that will alter your perception, mood or other physical factors, basically to get a ‘high’ off …show more content…
Well according to the NIH, “Prescription and OTC drugs may be abused in one or more of the following ways: Taking a medication that has been prescribed for somebody else. Unaware of the dangers of sharing medications, people often unknowingly contribute to this form of abuse by sharing their unused pain relievers with their family members.” Since the common misconception that prescription drugs are ‘safer’ than ‘illicit’ drugs you may find on the street, people will assume that it is safe to ‘hand-out’ their prescriptions to family and friends, since their personal doctor felt it was best for the individual (person handing out prescription drugs). Also, in Canada, the reasons pertaining to initial prescription drug abuse are the same in the United States, but according to the government of Canada, teenagers may abuse prescription drugs because they are ‘legal’, which creates a sense of security or the notion that it is alright to take, rather than using (taking) ‘illicit’ (illegal) drugs such as Marijuana and …show more content…
The campaign began in 2014 and collected a total of 390 tons, and from this last campaign, they broke the record 620 tons of unused and expired medications (Partnership for a Drug Free Canada, 2016). The overall effect from this campaign was pretty significant, “61% of parents exposed to the campaign said they had spoken specifically to their kids about the risk of misusing prescription drugs to get high, compared to 42 per cent of parents who hadn’t been exposed to the campaign. As a result – overall, 61 per cent of kids believe misusing prescription drugs to get high is a very risky practice.” (Partnership for a Drug Free Canada, 2016). Appropriately, prescription drug use among teens has statistically shown that its popularity among youths is declining: (2009 = 20%, 2011 = 17%, 2013 = 14%, 2015 = 12%) […] which can be attributed in part to an increased public awareness of the problem of prescription drug misuse [PDFC campaign] (Partnership for a Drug Free Canada,