"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" tackled America's problem with drugs. More specifically, America's problem with opioids where the host presents a startling case of its cause.
According to Time, the latest episode of John Oliver's show "Last Week Tonight" focuses on America's drug problem. But instead of focusing on heroin, cocaine or marijuana legalization, Oliver presented the country's drug problem with prescription drugs. The host argues that even though prescription drugs especially opioids has its benefits, it is one of the major causes of drug problems in the country.
Drug addiction in the country has a big connection with prescription drugs. Oliver revealed that 75% of drug addicts started with prescription drugs either through illegal means as well as those who started with actual prescription. The host then aired a segment from Al-Jazeera where a journalist talked to a group of drug addicts revealing that they all started with prescription drugs.
According to Slate, the country goes through 30,000 deaths a year through overdose of drug prescription alone. With more than 250,000 prescriptions on these types of drugs in 2012, the country faces a massive drug problem and its source is right under everyone's nose.
The show also presented that the country's problem with opioids started more than two decades ago when the country addressed its "opiophobia" where doctors tend to avoid prescribing opiate-based painkillers. Although the phobia has been addressed, big pharmaceuticals have peddled the drugs so much that it uses aggressive marketing and even misconstruing some facts and using terms such as "pseudo-addiction." Several pharmaceuticals have been fined with massive amounts because of these practices.
Oliver ended his segment not by pointing fingers but also on what could be done to curb the addiction on opiate based painkillers and those who are already addicted to these drugs. The biggest challenge for now is the availability of alternative to opiate based pain killers which is very difficult to find in rural areas. It is also a challenge for doctors and pharmaceutical companies to prevent this type of drug problem by avoiding over-prescription especially for minor pains.
Watch Oliver's full segment on opioids here:
