Over the past thirty years, America’s drug addiction has spiraled through illegal and legal mediums, cascading into a full-blown crisis. A 2018 national survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that 38% of US adults battled a substance abuse disorder in 2017. Coincidentally, according to Georgetown University, 66% of American adults currently receive prescription medication. As a nation, the U.S. is the most medicated society in history, a title bearing hefty consequences. Undeniably, the American drug crisis was sparked by the pharmaceutical industry, with their nearly genocidal product: opioids.
Designed for alleviating pain, opioids have become commonplace in pharmacies and on the streets. Well known drugs such as heroin, fentanyl, Vicodin (hydrocodon), OxyContin (oxycodone), and morphine all fall under the opioid umbrella. Though highly addictive, opioids remain heavily regulated under the watchful eye of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Food and Drug Administration. Contrary to such oversight, opioids have a history of frivolous prescription. From 1992 to 2010 alone, opioid prescriptions tripled, with stimulants increasing sevenfold (drugabusestatistics.org). Which leads us to the past few years—in 2021, a reported 75.4% of all overdoses in the nation involved opioids (CDC).
The excessive pumping of opioids into American streets, coined the opioid epidemic, has wreaked havoc across the states. Currently, the US has faced three waves of the opioid epidemic: the first, from the 1990s to 2010, due to the aforementioned excessive prescription of opioids; the second, in the early to mid 2010s, due to hyper-available heroin; the third, from 2016 onward due to fentanyl, an opioid up to 50% stronger than heroin. Though the first wave was helmed by pharmaceutical corporations, there was a shift in distributor during the second and third waves. The production of heroin, fentanyl, and most other illegal synthetic opioids found in America originate from Mexican cartels. The cartels buy opioid precursors (legal products with the base components of illicit drugs) from Chinese manufacturers. Using drug precursors, illicit opioids are then synthesized in Mexico and smuggled over the border (crsreports.congress.gov).
Though opioid prescriptions have deteriorated by 44.4% over the past decade, opioid related overdoses continue to increase (AMA 2021 Overdose Epidemic Report). According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, opioid overdoses have reached new heights since the pandemic, 2021 and 2022 positing over 100,000 opioid overdose deaths. As death rates rise, the federal government continues spending more and more on combating the drug crisis. In 2020, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Commission revealed that, in 2020 alone, the Fed spent $1.5 trillion in combating the opioid epidemic. Legislation wise, 2018 saw the signing of the SUPPORT Act, legislation bolstering programs for addiction education, rehabilitation, and healthcare provider training. Most of all, the act extended Medicare/Medicaid coverage to “vital treatment and recovery options, such as medication-assisted treatments (MAT) and residential care in Medicaid, as well as the coverage of methadone and telehealth services in Medicare.” Yet, in spite of government programs and spending, the opioid epidemic continues spiraling out of control. According to the CDC from 1999-2021, over 645,000 Americans died due to an opioid related overdose.
Worse still, the opioid epidemic (and to a greater extent the pharmaceutical world as a whole) exerts irreparable damage on the environment. The same way an addiction can deteriorate a body, medications can seep into the environment, contaminating our earth, water, and air. For example, drug residue from the drug manufacturing process contaminates surface water and surrounding air. Moreover, when excreted by a patient, a drug’s remnants enter the sewage system, leading them to surface waters and soil. Similarly, antibacterial medications for fish feed directly into waterways, while the excreted remains of antibiotics from farm animals are directly secreted onto the earth (ncbi).
What are the results? Well, that’s part of the problem; we don’t fully know yet. In a statement from EMBO Reports, author Alistair B.A. Boxall concludes “…we have only begun to research whether and how [medications] affect a wide range of organisms in the environment and what this means for environmental health.” However, recent studies mentioned by Boxall have found “low levels of a wide range of pharmaceuticals, including hormones, steroids, antibiotics and parasiticides, in soils, surface waters and groundwaters.” In short, the drug crisis has overseen the injection of opioids into both the American public and the environment.
Moreover, from metropolitan centers to rural backroads, swaths of used needles pollute the nation. Mostly used for fentanyl or heroin, single use needles serve as an overt marker of the opioid epidemic. In March of 2017, San Francisco’s Department of Public Works amassed over 13,000 used needles off the city’s streets (San Francisco Chronicle). Used needles pose numerous health concerns regarding infection and disease such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV. Additionally, most single use needles culminating on streets are entirely plastic, heightening existing concerns regarding excessive plastic use.
Overall, America’s opioid addiction has poisoned every facet of the nation’s existence; from the American people, to the water they drink, the air they breathe, and the ground they stand on. Hundreds of thousands have already died, millions of lives have been ruined, and millions more will suffer if we continue tackling our drug crisis with a muted hand; the opioid epidemic’s prognosis is carcinogenic, and terminal if we remain unresponsive.