OVERPRESCRIBED: America's Habit of Overprescribing - from Antibiotics to Opioids

OVERPRESCRIBED: America's Habit of Overprescribing - from Antibiotics to Opioids

The five subjects listed at the top of the whitehouse.gov webpage are economy, national security, budget, immigration, and the opioid crisis. Indeed, dependence, misuse, and overprescription of painkillers is a public health threat. According to The Atlantic, in 2016, 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in the U.S., most of them due to opioids. That’s more than the number of Americans killed in the wars in Vietnam and Iraq combined. Opioids, however, are not the only drugs that can have significant and lasting public heath effects. Seemingly more innocuous medications like antibiotics have been similarly exhausted. Many have become ineffective in treating a range of illnesses from minor colds to fatal infections, promoting drug resistance in previously manageable and curable conditions. Today, at least 30 percent of antibiotics prescribed in the United States are unecessary, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). 30 percent of antibiotic prescriptions in the U.S. roughly totals 47 million a year, and while many doctors seek to treat their patients to the best of their ability, reducing chronic pain, or helping children recover faster from an ear infection, both drug types, when used in excess, have proven to be destructive for individuals, their families, and the nation. In this Salon, we will discuss the use of prescription drugs of all kinds in the United States, and whether prescribers should be held to a higher standard.

Suggested Articles:

Too Many Meds? America's Love Affair With Prescription Medication, Consumer Reports

The Opioid Epidemic: A Crisis Years in the Making, The New York Times

1 in 3 Antibiotic Prescriptions Unnecessary, CDC

An ‘Overprescription of Opioids’ That Led to a Crisis, The Atlantic

Antibiotics are overprescribed: Here's why that's not good, and what you need to know, ABC News

"Modern Medicine May Not Be Doing Your Microbiome Any Favors", NPR Author Interview

Excerpt from Missing Microbes by Dr. Martin Blaser, NPR