Narcotic Abuse Beyond the User

In a world full of so many opinions, it is difficult to narrow my focus onto one specific issue. The first thoughts that come to mind are gender inequality, abortion, and climate change; however, while I find those topics interesting, I am not knowledgeable or interested enough to dedicate a semester to these topics. I feel that these issues are on such a large scale that it would take much more than a semester of writing to feel that I had contributed.
As I would like to take on a smaller scale issue, I have narrowed it down to two options, drunk driving and narcotic abuse. When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates was killed in a drunk driving accident that also paralyzed her father. From then on, my community was passionate about providing awareness of the consequences of drunk driving. I was a member of a club in high school that partnered with MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving to bring their message to high school students. Although drunk driving is a familiar and important topic to me, I feel that narcotic abuse is a serious issue that is not taken as such.
As a pre-pharmacy student, medicine is a main interest of mine. I have worked in retail pharmacies for three years and have witnessed narcotic abuse from the pharmacy perspective. When my training began, one of the main focusses was how to determine if a script is fraudulent. We are also taught to look for signs in a customer that hint towards narcotics abuse, and I am required to check with the pharmacist if I am at all uncertain of the legitimacy. Almost weekly, pharmacists are notified of doctors who abused their power to prescribe and are no longer permitted to write for narcotics, as well as doctors notifying us when their prescription pads have been stolen. I have also witnessed customers abusing our pharmacy to feed their addiction. While working this summer, we came across a family that had been receiving narcotic prescriptions and sending different members of the family to pick them up and “play dumb” to the fact that they were frequently receiving narcotics. After our pharmacist became suspicious, they began looking into the family members’ prescription history and after investigating discovered that the family members were getting narcotics for their mother. My experience in pharmacy made me aware of the severity and prevalence of narcotic abuse.
On a personal level, I have a family member struggling with narcotic abuse. Without forging a prescription or having others get their medication, they manage to legitimately obtain pills frequently enough to maintain an addiction. It is hard to watch someone you love become a stranger, to see them during their bad days, to put up with their mood swings, to walk into their home and see a counter so full of pill bottles it looks like a pharmacy, and to have them forget a phone conversation simply because they were too high to remember it. Narcotic abuse does not just affect the person addicted. It is an issue that spreads to all health professionals and friends and family members, as well.
Of course I believe in the good of medicine. I understand that most people take narcotics for legitimate reasons and they help them to function in their daily lives. However, I want to make others aware that narcotic abuse is a large issue. I also think that everyone should know the signs for a narcotic addiction and how to help those addicted. If we learn how to identify and prevent the issue, we can take a step in the right direction towards decreasing narcotic abuse.