[ad_1]
In recent years, the opioid crisis and its impact on American families have made headlines. Now that nearly 400,000 Americans have lost their lives, there is much questioning about the identity of the real culprits of the epidemic, whether it is about Big Pharma, about Doctors or families of billionaires like the Sacklers, who are now the subject of more than a thousand lawsuits accusing them of deliberately minimizing the situation. risks related to prescription opioids in order to continue to reap benefits.
But as Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei, the hosts of the NPR podcast Through, recently discovered during a research on their episode on the history of opioids in the United States, the roots of the crisis go back much further than one might think. According to Adelfatah, the story of the opioid crisis is essentially a story of pain and how Americans have treated it historically: "There was a recurring question of which pain was considered a" true pain "and how to fix it?" she said Rolling stone. "In the 19th century, the treatment of pain was clearly sexist. there was a racial prejudice, and many of these prejudices remain in different forms today. "
As Throughline reports, the roots of the opioid crisis go back to the mid-nineteenth century, when the German pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner discovered morphine while he was conducting experiments with the opium poppy. Sertürner feared that morphine would be addictive, and should therefore be used sparingly to relieve pain, but doctors began to prescribe it to wounded soldiers on the battlefield of the American Civil War. "At the end of the war, not only do you have a lot of dependent soldiers, but you introduce this new drug into American life," says Abdelfatah. The drug began to be prescribed mainly to white women in the United States for conditions ranging from cough to menstrual cramps, mainly because doctors thought women were less able to withstand the pain.
When patients began to die from overdose, doctors realized how addictive and dangerous morphine was, which led them to start prescribing what they considered to be a less addictive substitute: heroin. Companies like Bayer have advertised for heroin safe medical treatment for respiratory ailments – even for sale to children. An advertisement in Spanish dating from the beginning of the century shows a mother who gives it to the girl with a spoon. "IIt's fascinating to see how bad it is, and it shows the changing attitude we have, as well as the advertising community, towards opiates in our culture, "said Arablouei.
The possession and manufacture of heroin was criminalized in 1924, resulting in the underground sale of the drug. This, in turn, caused urban dwellers, black and brown communities, to become addicted to drugs, resulting in a cultural shift from drug addiction to opioids as a medical problem to a criminal problem. . "There is usually a more aggressive response to drug epidemics – as in the case of greater criminalization – when it occurs in urban communities, black or brown. This tends to be the historical model, "explains Arablouei. "You see that being played with heroin when the problem goes underground. This is what we are seeing today: the opioid crisis is receiving a lot of attention and politicians are showing much more empathy than you have seen vis-à-vis, for example , from the heroin outbreak. [in urban communities], or the crack epidemic in the 1990s.
The arrival of Oxycontin in 1996, combined with the physician's approval of the drug as a long-term, non-addictive method of relieving pain, led to the birth of the epidemic. Opioid prescription as we design it today. Companies like Purdue Pharmaceuticals, run by the billionaire Sackler family, perfected the art of using the endorsements of health professionals to market opioids to patients with chronic pain – and the result, we know it now has been an epidemic of considerable magnitude. resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
In recent centuries, opioid addiction has been treated as both a medical problem and a criminal problem, depending on the communities it has affected. Today, it is mainly perceived as a white, middle-class and rural phenomenon, but it is changing rapidly as drugs such as fentanyl are increasingly distributed in urban communities. "IIt may be originally a predominantly white community problem, but it is no longer the case, "says Adelfatah. "It affects almost every community, almost every race and demographic group in the country."
However, throughout the history of the epidemic in its various forms, what has not changed is its uniquely American nature, as Arablouei describes it. "Our culture has become so good in marketing and this marriage of capitalism and marketing and medicine is being perfected here in America, for better or for worse," he said. "[And] it made a very American crisis. "
You can listen to the Through episode below.
[ad_2]
Source link