Epidemic: American opioid abuse stats are alarming
Twenty years ago when the U.N. first began compiling the World Happiness Scale the U.S. ranked third. But although we are today the world’s wealthiest nation we now rank an unimpressive 19th in happiness and contentment. What happened?
Four different nations have held the No. 1 ranking over the last four years: Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Finland. Note that all four are quite prosperous economically and provide a broad range of social services to their citizens who willingly pay high taxes in return.
All these countries with high happiness rankings have high personal incomes, high health care standards, generous social services and liberal personal freedoms. But despite our strong economy and low crime rate, the U.S. has dropped from third to 19th in happiness ranking over the past two decades.
In recent years the relatively low rankings of certain countries are possibly related to three emerging health problems: obesity, depression and opioid addiction. The last two are possibly related. And the United States leads the pack in the deadliest of these negatives, opioid addiction, and is significant in the other two.
The current statistics for American opioid abuse are alarming. We lead the world as 130 Americans die each day from opioid overdoses. And in addition to the illegal drug market, our legal opioid prescription rate is 40% higher than the rest of the developed world. What does that say about us? Are we overprescribed? Then why?
After open-heart surgery in 2013 I found Tylenol to be quite effective in relieving post-surgical pain. But there was, of course, no accompanying euphoria or “high” that we seem to find comforting. There is possibly a time to treat pain with prescription drugs and definitely a time to discontinue their use. Somebody is falling down on the job here.
Opioid abuse is not only a national problem, it’s a severe local one as well. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but a past front-page report in The Catoosa County News and Walker County Messenger revealed that enough opioids were legally shipped into these two counties by pharmaceutical companies to provide each adult resident with several pills per day. We need to face the fact that we are by far the nation most addicted to mind-altering substances. And these drugs do not all come across our southern borders as certain politicians would have us believe. They are manufactured and shipped right here in the U.S. to be legally and liberally prescribed. That’s a little a little hard to digest and accept, but it’s a brutal fact.
It has been generally established that treatment and prevention education are more effective in reducing substance abuse than trying to shut off the supply by arresting and jailing the dealers. When one source is closed down two more seem to spring up. The severity? In a recent year drug overdoses killed far more Americans (62,000) than breast cancer (44,000). Those are alarming numbers. But what are we doing to stop this epidemic, one that could be more lethal in the long run than the coronavirus?
Should we legalize marijuana as some recommend, a substance many believe to be non-addictive? Although pot smokers vehemently deny it is a “gateway drug,” most of those I have known with hard drug abuse problems started out smoking a few joints with their friends. I believe the recreational use of any substance to change one’s mood has the potential to become addictive.
George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@ bellsouth.net.