Opioids in America

Catalog description

The course ranges in complexity by first providing students with an understanding of the history of drugs focusing on opiates/opioids, heroin, fentanyl, along with other stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens. Students will be able to understand the fundamentals of drug use and abuse and the physical and mental effects of psychoactive drugs. The opioid epidemic is having a devastating impact in communities across the nation and fueling a dramatic increase in drug deaths of thousands of people. Opioids, either prescription medications or illicit drugs, represent one of the most serious drug crises that the United States has ever experienced. Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental or unintentional death in the US, and opioid addiction is driving this epidemic. This seminar will explore the major issues that have surfaced in the United States as to who is to blame for the nation's largest drug epidemic. Since 1999, America has witnessed over several hundred thousand of people who have died of an opioid drug overdose. The blame for this drug scourge could be pointed to many stakeholders, including the pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma), manufacturers, distributors, doctors, pharmacists, federal government, parents, the end users, and perhaps others.