Maximum Yield Cannabis USA August / September 2017 | Page 66

heal
Can
Help Overcome
OPIOID
ADDICTION?
?
by Dinafem Seeds
Opioid consumption in the US has reached such an
alarming level that experts are talking about it in terms
of being a pandemic. Some have turned to cannabis
to help their addiction, but does MMJ really help?
T
hey call it the opioid pandemic and it has already become
the main cause of accidental death in the US. In fact,
opioid painkillers and heroin are responsible for an overdose
death every 19 minutes. In the last decade alone, the National
Institute of Drug Abuse reported a 2.8-fold increase in the
US overdose mortality rate due to opioid drugs. According
to official sources, in 2014, more than 28,000 people lost their
lives to opioids. Heroin addiction in the US was previously
associated with minorities and disadvantaged social groups,
but this recent pandemic is also affecting a new group of
people. While overdose death figures amongst Hispanic and
African Americans remain unchanged, the number of deaths
amongst white, middle-class Americans is soaring. All of these
alarming figures make us wonder what is going on in the US
and why the American society is hit that badly by the addiction
to these substances.
THE CAUSE OF A CRISIS
This unprecedented phenomenon seems to stem from the
addiction to the opioid painkillers that doctors have been
prescribing, rather lightly, to their patients for years. Drugs such
as Vicodin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone are prescribed daily in
the US—the number of prescriptions per year in the US amounts
to 259 million, which equates to a pill bottle per adult—creating
a social fabric that gets used to operating under the effect
of these legal drugs. In a society where painkillers are the
answer to the slightest feeling of pain, the situation is reaching
unbearable levels, as opioid painkillers are highly addictive
and responsible for other negative effects.
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