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Opioids and American Youths Student’s Name Institution Affiliation Opioids and American Youths A recent report by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) reveals that deaths of young Americans due to abuse of opioids have quadrupled since 2000. For this reason, President Donald J Trump has declared the current opioids crisis as a national emergency (Mukherjee, 2017). Opioids are drugs prescribed as painkillers but have been abused for leisure purposes by youths between the age of 15 and 19 years old (Mukherjee, 2017). Examples of opioids include heroin, morphine, hydrocodone, and Buprenorphine. Apart from these deaths that McIntyre (2017) states that had amounted to 28,647 by the year 2014, the cases of overdose have tripled as indicated by some suicide cases in the last five years. This necessitates effective strategies to help the addicted recover and also shield others. In the fight against opioids addiction, efforts from the government, parents, and schools through processes of policy development, good parenting and counseling are critical. Opioids belong to a group of opiates, a class of drugs that contain chemicals extracted from opium poppy plants. The chemicals have been useful in the manufacture of drugs used in pain management, cough suppression among other prescription uses. Most of the opioids are legal thus readily easy to obtain, prescribed and widely used among the youths. Others such as heroin which sometimes used in controlled clinical settings are illegal and lethal in high dosage. The key reason Opioids are highly addictive is that they are effective in pain management while at the same time gives a strong euphoria or “high” feeling upon
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