Prescription Drug Monitoring and Drug Abuse Article

Prescription Drug Monitoring and Drug Abuse - Article Example With high rates of abuse of opiate analgesics among teenagers in the United States, a particularly urgent priority is the investigation of best practices for treating pain in adolescents as well as the development of prevention strategies to reduce diversion and abuse." This addresses the issue of the abuse and misuse of prescription drugs. Determining whether or not a person is abusing or is addicted to a prescription medication can be a daunting task for officials. This is particularly true for patients receiving chronic pain relievers such as opioids (Compton, Darakjian, and Miotto, 1998). Prescription drugs that are commonly prescribed for this purpose include fentanyl, hydromorphone, meperidine, morphine, and oxycodone. Opioid analgesics appear to be the prescription drugs most commonly abused (Weaver and Schnoll, 2002 and Zachny, et al, 2003). "In 2002, opioid analgesics accounted for 9.85% of all drug a... identifying the causes and sources of diversion, without interfering with legitimate medical practice and patient care" (Gilson, Ryan, Joranson, and Dahl, 2004, pg. 1). Search Strategies Since this manuscript is academic in nature, only academic journals were used as reference material. An Internet search was conducted utilizing a keyword search of 'prescription drug monitoring and drug abuse.' When the results were returned via the Google search engine, 'scholarly resources' for the keyword string was chosen and the resources were carefully picked from that subcategory according to content and relevance. Background/Significance According to Bedell (2000, pg. 2129), "Misuse of medications is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Few studies have examined the frequency of, and factors associated with, discrepancies between what doctors prescribe and what patients take in actual practice. Discrepancies among recorded and reported medications were common and involved all classes of medications, including cardiac and prescription drugs. Older age and polypharmacy were the most significant correlates of discrepancy. The pervasiveness of discrepancies can have significant health care implications, and action is urgently needed to address their causes. Such action would likely have a positive impact on patient care." Chronic, nonmalignant pain is often treated with opiate drugs. Due to the addictive nature of opiates, this practice is quite controversial. One study on the problem took place at Seattle's VA Medical Center. It was designed to "create opiate abuse criteria, test inter-rater reliability of the criteria, apply the criteria to a group of chronic pain patients, and correlate the risk of opiate abuse with the results of alcohol and drug testing" (Chabal,