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Jacob Richey

Mrs. Walter

English 1101

9 December 2018

Education on the Heroin Epidemic

Many people in the Dayton, are struggling with many different addiction problems.

Recently there has become a big surge of heroin addiction, this is caused by the pharmaceutical

companies over prescribing pain pills such as Oxycodone and Codeine.

There is a stereotypical family with a mother and father, with 2 infants. The father is a

construction worker who works on scaffolding on buildings. It was like any other day at work for

him, besides he forgot to put all the safety clips on his harness. This small step on this day

changed his family’s entire life. He fell off of the building and broke his back and from the pain

and impact, this resulted in him being unconscious.

He was successfully transfered into the hospital for care, the doctors there had given

him all kinds of pain medication. With the care of the hospital he was able to live and began to

heal. Although, he was put on a constant dosage of Oxycodone. He was able to heal enough to

leave the hospital but needed a neck brace to walk around. He soon became addicted on the

pain pills but the prescription was soon going to end.

Not long after the prescription ended, the father started using heroin. His wife started

finding used needles in the bathroom trash. She tried being there for him but the use of these

drugs pushed her away. There was no way of persuading her husband into treatment for this

addiction with his attitude just reflected his want to become high. The wife and kids moved away

from the father, making the mother of the kids to only take care of them. The kids are going to

grow up with the mentality that this drug is something you can not come back from, the

experience with their father sets this mentality. It difficult to raise children on a women’s pay in

Dayton, Ohio.
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This is not something that only happens in the heart of Dayton but can happen to any

family or individual in any city. Heroin is an extremely addictive drug that has started to rise in

popularity in the city of Dayton. A little too much, some might say, making Dayton number 2 in

overdoses says the newspaper of Cincinnati. This is due to the major pharmaceutical

companies producing these pills, advertising they are non-addictive and helps with the pain.

Resulting in the physician over prescribing individual. The drug itself then changes the user's

mind to physically need to take them. When the prescription then ends, the addict starts to buy

them illegally which tends to be less expensive for that individual. Making these people use

heroin to get the same high but for a drastically cheaper price. This slowly starts destroying their

life they had made for themselves.

These pharmaceutical companies are sitting back making these pills and making a very

big amount of money, not caring what affect the pills have on individuals and their families. Then

the pharmaceutical companies see that there are people struggling with addiction and need help

getting out of the hole that they were put in by these companies. They create another pill to try

and get the person detoxed and have the withdrawals stop. These companies are just wanting

to keep making big money instead of actually caring for the health of the people from their pills

they create. There is all kinds of people who are affected by this ordeal, from the people who

make the pills, to the people who lose their families over it. In the story above, you can see that

the main stakeholders are the users of the pain medication, this changed his whole life around

for the worse. His family is another major stakeholder because they have to be there for the

addict. In this case, the addict did not want any assistance from his family. Which resulted in the

mother moving away and the children become a stakeholder. They will be raised without a

father and lose the guidance of that significant figure. The pill mills are one big stakeholder for

getting these average Americans hooked on such a drug like this. They are making a profit off of

the people dying from it.

Stakeholders
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There are many important stakeholders with this epidemic but this paper will be focusing

on the main ones. The first stakeholder that will be discussed is the addicts in this situation. The

addicts are being used by these big pill companies. They get handed the short end of the stick,

Mike Puterbaugh from The Funk Music Hall of Fame, shared with me that there are different

kinds of addicts. There are the people who would of never thought of taking heroin but was

pulled into this major problem by the pill mills. Then there are the people who are just junkies

and want to get high to mask their own pain in life. The values of these people are somewhat

the same for everyone. They are just wanting to get high and escape reality, that is why their

families end up splitting up. The addict does not care about anything besides being able to get

their next high. There is also a population who is not part of this majority and still care about

their family life and will go get medical treatment. The family loss is big thing they sacrifice from

using. Another thing that they lose is the normality of their brain. The chemicals in these

extensive drugs changes the brain's chemistry, making the person dependent on using the

drug. These people are not only becoming physically attached to these drugs but are losing

their lives over it. In the city of Dayton, there has been a spike in the amount of heroin

overdoses because in some cases, the needles contain fentanyl and carfentanil. These have

the power to make a person instantly die with such a small amount. The addicts can affect many

different other stakeholders in positive and negative ways. The pill mills are being affected

positively but not from a moral stand but from an economic point of view.

The court system is another stakeholder and you could say it is positive or negative for

them. It is positive because it creates a base of cases to work but also negative because they

should not have to work so much on cases about this drug. There is a different branch for drug

cases called drug court. This new part of the justice system is a really positive thing for people

who actually want to get help. Bill de fries is a small business owner, whom informed me that

the drug court system takes many different variables to see if they qualify to be apart of. The

courts give the person treatment right away but they also look at the history of that person to
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see if they are someone who is in and out of drug charges. The drug court can either get the

person out of jail time or just reduce the amount of time they have to serve. This also works for

probation of a person and can make the time they have less than originally sentenced. The

values of the court systems are very good. They are set in place to try and help these people

going through this struggle. To get them back to their healthy selves, also trying to keep them

out of jail and back to their families. They do good research when they are trying to figure out if

the person deserves to go through the drug court system. This is also good because then it gets

the people who are just junkies off the streets and is saving their lives too. The people who are

junkies could have the chance of getting a dosage of heroin that had one of the harder drugs,

such as fetinayl or carfentynal that would make them end their life. The loss in this system is

that we are filling up the prisons and jails with drug junkies compared to people who should

belong in prison. The court systems are directly related to the addicts because they are one of

the last things that can really save them from going down the wrong path farther than they

already have.

My third stakeholder would be the pharmaceutical companies, they are the ones who

over prescribed these very addictive drugs to people just to make a massive profit off of the

struggles of the normal population. These companies were only gaining from this at the

beginning they were just making all kinds of money and just kept mass producing these pills.

This negatively affects the addicts by making them addicts in the first place changing their whole

lives around. Recently though these companies have been getting sued, causing them a huge

loss in not only money but even closing these facilities. This ties in with the court systems

because they know not everyone is a junky and is trying to give these people who got hooked

on these drugs a second chance to live the life they were supposed to live. This stakeholder is

also the company who makes the recovery drugs in the rehabilitation centers said Elizabeth

Wolfe with Montgomery County ESC. These drugs include lofexidine to ease the withdrawal

symptoms. Methadone is a pill taken orally to dampen the “high” from heroin, Subutex is
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another drug that is given orally but just relives the cravings, but with the drug injected into the

humans system, it can induce the withdrawal symptoms. National Institute on Drug Abuse says

there is another medication that they give is called Vivitrol. This blocks out the actions of the

opioids and is not addictive. This medication would be the best for rehabilitation but it is not

what the addicts want to use. It is a long acting formula and only has to be given once a month.

Solution

All these individuals are being brought into this state wide problem, but there is no real

solution that can help all of these different stakeholders. In result, society should teach the

younger generations the hard reality of these drugs and what they can do to them. Individuals

also need to include how society can learn different coping skills that are healthy for you instead

of abusing a drug. There is all kinds of health classes in high schools or middle schools and this

is where people should show these kids what is going on in Dayton. This age group was picked

because it is the age where they teenagers start focusing more on life around them and can see

the seriousness of this situation. Take a couple days out of the year for the health teacher to

actually go over the chemical change that these drugs do to a person and what they end up like.

This can also include success stories of people who have overcome the addiction. Our society

focuses too much on the fear aspect of everything trying to make people visualize this if it

happens to them. This is a positive solution but we need to show people that if they do go

through something like this then there are people out there who have made it through

rehabilitation. No funding would be needed for these presentations. Although, an additional

class could be added for the research on the chemical changes in the mind. Students will have

the opportunity to get a grade for it and also provide valuable information for the middle

schoolers or high schoolers. We would introduce this idea to the health teachers and go from

there. People do not like taking orders from their superiors in the school systems, the fact that a

student is proposing this idea is more likely for them to try it. After a couple years we could try

and bring it to the school board once we saw there was a positive outlook to this experiment.
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There are non-profit organizations who are trying to spread the awareness of the overall drug

problem. They have been around for a very long time and they are not making a huge impact to

any population. The drug problem is just getting worse but it is not the organizations fault. I am

going to ask the health teachers and see if they would want to implement these presentations

into their curriculum and see if they would either be a chemistry class or a language arts class

who would want to put this paper into their yearly activities as well. If they will be interested then

I believe once one of the subjects is willing to do this, it will give the other class a little shove in

the right direction. So far I have only spoke to some teachers about speaking to the middle

schoolers and if that was at all possible. I need to further my research in speaking to the health

class teachers and some of the language art classes.

Works cited

Miller, Mike. Personal interview. 28 November 2018

Hayes, Kyle. Personal interview. 28 November 2018

Imhoff, Missy. Personal interview. 29 November 2018

Barnett, Jessica. Personal interview. 29 November 2018

Chandler , Jade. “Residential Treatment Center | United States |

Woodhaven.”Residential Treatment Center | United States | Woodhaven,

www.woodhavenohio.com/.

Delaney, Greg. Personal interview. 30 November 2018

Richardson, Ryan. Personal interview. 28 November 2018

Sturgill, Ashley. Personal interview. 6 December 2018

Wolfe, Elizabeth. Personal interview. 15 November 2018

De fries, Bill. Personal interview. 26 November 2018

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