Thesis Statement: Opioid addiction and abuse is a rising problem in the United States claiming hundreds of thousands of lives and creating an epidemic. Opiod addiction needs to be controlled by doctors and the drug manufacturing companies supplying them.
Background and Evidence: The epidemic of opioid abuse has been rapidly growing in the past 2 decades, and has claimed over 400,000 lives. While needing the drugs for pain is a different scenario, big pharmaceutical companies are giving them away like candy.
As for enforcing the drug epiudemi, the DEA didnt do much to slow it down. The drug abuse was not regulated, despite more and more poeple dying from the drugs. The DEAs main job is top regulate the use and sale of drugs of all kinds. It has been said that the DEA allowed large quantitys of the drug to be produced while the death toll raised.
People of all ages are given these drugs, even as young as 11. An 11 year old kid was prescribes painkillers at such a young age, one pill led to another leading him in a downhill spiral. By just 18 years old, he was fully addicted to ocycotin with no turjning back, and at the age of 21 he died from his addiction.
Opioid is a very difficult situation to stop because of the people that actually need these prescribed painkillers. The issue is for the severely addicted people of all ages dying at the hands of their addiction. The US is personally dealing with this struggle first hand to put an end to an epidemic.
Sources I Have Found:
Opioids are an Equal Opportunity Killer : The crisis of opioids brings equal grief and death to all races, parties, classes and groups. If there’s one thing this country has it common, it is that we are at a peak of an epidemic that needs to be stopped.
Making Drug Companies Pay for the Opioid Epidemic : Are the courts where we will find justice for the epidemic? Many are blaming big pharmaceutical companies that make and prescribe painkillers and opioids. The company’s were still producing mass amounts as deaths were rising.
D.E.A let Opioid Production Surge as Crisis Grew : The D.E.A was slow to catch onto the crisis, and for the poeple beng ion charge of regulating drugs, that should be concening. The anound of deaths causes by opioud should be seen as a epidemic and attempted to be stopped immediatly.
Sources I havent found:
I want to find more sources about the lawsuit against the big manufacturares of these drugs .
I want to find more information on which opiouids are more addictive and if more poeple are dying from certain types of opioids.
Counter arguments to refute:
Big Pharmaceutical companies have no part in the drug crisis and prosecuting them will not improve the epidemic.
Cutting back on opioids will do more hurt than help for patients that need the drug.
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As described, this Writing Plan is a good start with plenty of room for development and clarification. The Opioid crisis didn’t happen because of a single event but because of a perfect storm of greed, dependency, an addictive product, a whole host of enablers, and even some well-meaning doctors who thought, for a while at least, they were doing something good for their patients.
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Hello, Roses!
You have a good start going here, Roses. But your Thesis only SOUNDS like a solution. If there are too many traffic deaths caused by drunk driving, could we put the responsibility on car manufacturers to stall the epidemic? You don’t need to say EVERYTHING about your argument in your thesis statement, but what will encourage readers to continue if you don’t at least HINT what your solution might be? Do drug makers need to STOP MAKING opioids? Do they have to stop making them until they can come up with a NON-ADDICTIVE opioid? How else could the drug COMPANIES stop the abuse? What role do doctors play? Are they OVER-PRESCRIBING opioids to patients who don’t need them? If so, adding the word “overprescribing” to your Thesis statement, just one word, would make it more effective.
What does it mean to “give drugs away like candy”? Is that what the drug-MAKERS do? Or is it the doctors who write the prescriptions? Or is it the pharmacists who fill prescriptions they know are going to the black market? Your credibility depends on the accuracy of your claims. This one is too broad to be believable. We agree somebody let too many people use too much medication, but your job is to tell us WHO and HOW (and maybe WHY)!
This is a REALLY INTERESTING POINT. I think, because I’m going to require you to NARROW your emphasis to one truly demonstrable thesis, that this is the one you should focus on. Nobody else is blaming the DEA, and you could do the world a service by pointing out their culpability.
You don’t mean that, exactly. Abuse doesn’t get regulated. USE gets regulated. AVAILABILITY can be regulated. DISPENSATION can be regulated. DISTRIBUTION can be regulated. But people abuse on their own time without interference from government.
I like the emphasis on the DEA’s “main job.” But, be careful what you blame them for. Allowing “large quantities of the drug to be produced” is not in itself harmful. Allowing “large quantities of the drug to be distributed without valid prescriptions” is within their jurisdiction.
Here. I looked up their official ;Mission Statement: The mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States and bring to the criminal and civil justice system of the United States, or any other competent jurisdiction, those organizations and principal members of organizations, involved in the growing, manufacture, or distribution of controlled substances appearing in or destined for illicit traffic in the United States; and to recommend and support non-enforcement programs aimed at reducing the availability of illicit controlled substances on the domestic and international markets.
Note that their responsibility on manufacturing is to regulate “manufacture . . . destined for illicit traffic.” That means they could only crack down on opioids if they could show they were being MANUFACTURED for ILLICIT use. The obvious defense is that they were manufactured for legitimate use, distributed to pharmacies for legitimate dispensation, wrongfully distributed by criminals and abused by abusers. How does that implicate the pharmaceutical companies?
This is probably a very useful anecdote. Who’s responsible for that child’s addiction? Did doctors wrongfully prescribe it to him? Did the child take too many pills? Did the drug company TELL THE DOCTORS the pills were safe for kids KNOWING THAT THEY WERE NOT?
Notice how many ways there are to spread the blame. That’s why, when you’re limited to 1000 words, you’ll want ONE culprit. You have time to build a case against just one. I like your choice of the DEA.
How do you feel about such a strategy?
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