Op-Ed: Fentanyl pill producers used to mimic other pharmaceuticals, now they don’t have to
“These are not medical drugs. These are like,” he says, holding a large blister with one pill in it. “It’s like, ‘Hey, you were like really good at it when you were ten or twelve but you probably shouldn’t be working the streets doing this.’ “
I’ve already seen an opiate pill in my hand, a small one with “Soma” on it. A prescription, prescribed for a patient I never met, but a medication that was prescribed by a doctor who never knows me.
I pick it up and take it to the trash.
These pills are used in the United States, and in Canada, for the treatment of severe pain, including the use of Fentanyl in pain management. These pills are commonly purchased by street dealers at pharmacies or online, and are sold as oxycodone-based medications to people who are addicted to opioids.
The problem is the opioid epidemic that’s taking hold across North America (and spreading globally). Opioids are currently the second-most-common type of legal drug in the United States, after marijuana. And it’s estimated that opioid addiction is now the leading cause of accidental drug poisoning in the United States, as well as the leading cause of death in America when compared to alcohol and other drugs combined.
I am not alone in dealing with this problem. Many people who are addicted to opioids have used Fentanyl to deal with their pain. Fentanyl has been used for pain management since the late 1970s. In 2008, the FDA approved Fentanyl as a prescription opioid.
Since that time, Fentanyl has also been administered intravenously as part of a patient’s treatment, because it produces an extremely rapid and strong analgesic effect.
The FDA requires that Fentanyl be prescribed to relieve chronic pain that is not being relieved by alternative treatments, or to treat terminally-ill patients in extreme cases. Opioid medications are being used more widely in the treatment of chronic pain, and, as a result, pain clinics across the United States