Every hour, 7 people die in the US because of opioid use

Leer en español: Opiáceos: ¿Qué son y por qué Trump pide muerte a sus traficantes?

During the past few months, the United States has strengthened its strategic plans to combat the nation's opiate epidemic. That is why President Donald Trump announced a plan to control the problem, in which it is proposed to reinforce the sales counter and apply the death penalty for drug traffickers who commercialize said drug.

"If we do not get tough on drug dealers, we're wasting our time, and that harshness includes the death penalty," Trump said during a speech in New Hampshire, adding that traffickers end up with thousands of lives each year and are not judged by this.

Trump's plan would call for the death penalty only for certain drug traffickers, mainly opiate marketers, and for this it has the backing of the Justice Department, which after the president's announcement clarified that the maximum penalty will be sought against drug traffickers "when be appropriate according to the current law. " However, until now the legal implementation that would be carried out to ratify the president's request is unknown.

What are opioids?

According to data collected by the DEA, in 2016 at least 63,600 people died from the use of opiates. This figure is equivalent to 174 deaths per day and 7 per hour. The opioid epidemic that reported growth in the US since 2015 has become one of the main causes of death in that country, above traffic accidents.

Opioids are a group of drugs manufactured to serve as analgesics or anesthetics, that is, medications used to relieve severe pain. Its properties allow the blocking of the sensation of pain at the time of joining neuronal receptors. Sometimes this type of drug can be prescribed to patients with cancer, terminally ill or who have just come out of surgery. But despite its medical use, the risk of addiction is high and dangerous.

50 times more powerful than heroin

This type of drug is 50 times more potent than heroin. Its consumption in low doses can cause drowsiness and pleasure sensation, but increasing the dose or doing it repeatedly causes a decrease in heart rate and breathing, thus causing the death of the subject.

In U.S.A. One kilogram of opiates is valued between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars, however, this same amount can be sold up to $ 80,000, according to the DEA. In the northern nation, a large part of the population with scarce resources comes to be prescribed with opioids, due to the reduction of costs implied by it. If a patient with chronic pain requires physical therapy and can not afford it, opiates are the best solution.

Last October, President Donald Trump declared the opiate epidemic as a "national health emergency", since then the effort to free the dependents of this drug has been expanded locally by states that have used resources to combat drug abuse. scourge This is how recently Los Angeles and New York announced a new increase of funds that adds up to 60 million dollars to reinforce the scheme of support and support for the victims of this addiction.

Latin American Post | Krishna Jaramillo

Translated from "Opiáceos: ¿Qué son y por qué Trump pide muerte a sus traficantes?"