Last updated : December 23, 2024
The amount of abuse cases concerning prescription, narcotic painkillers in the United States is truly staggering. There are already a number of drugs on the market that are based on dangerous opioids like hydrocodone and oxycodone. The U.S. leads the world in distribution of these addictive chemicals, to the tune of 84% (of painkillers given to the population). Even worse is that 99% of the world’s hydrocodone supply is dispersed to those living in the United States, according to Dr. Dana Jane Saltzman.
Enter ZohydroER, from the pharmaceutical company Zogenix, Inc. Zohydro is the next player in the arena of prescription opioids. The primary feature of this new drug is that it contains massive amounts of hydrocodone designed to be time-released inside the body over a period of 12 hours. The doses of Zohydro are available in strengths of up to 50mg, which is roughly five times the amount found in other, hydrocodone-based drugs such as Vicodin and Lortab. Another unique feature of this scary, new drug is that it is pure hydrocodone, whereas every other brand of narcotic painkiller is mixed with non-narcotic pain medication such as acetaminophen. Zogenics claims that the reason for this distinctive feature is that, because of the abuse of prescription meds, there has been a substantial increase in the amount of acetaminophen caused liver conditions. The more acetaminophen one takes in while abusing hydrocodone or oxycodone, the more liver damage they sustain due to the overdose of non-narcotic painkillers.
The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has labeled the phenomenon of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. as an epidemic. The number of deaths associated with legally prescribed opioids has tripled since 1999 when the potential for abuse involving these drugs first became widely apparent. In 1999, the number of people taking prescription drugs stronger than morphine (which traditionally was only prescribed under the most dire of circumstances) was only about 17%. This number had soared to almost 40% in 2012. Now, in 2015, we are poised to introduce a new drug into the market which pales all others in comparison. Dr. Saltzman and Ray Isackila, who works extensively with addiction recovery and counseling in Cleveland, OH, are opposed to the introduction of Zohydro into the drug market, and they aren’t buying the acetaminophen argument, either.
Isackila voices the worries of all who work in his field of addiction recovery when he states that the potential for abuse of this new drug is too high to be ignored. There is a concern that the drug could be crushed (as has often been done with oxycodone and hydrocodone-based drugs. Other worries include the abuse of prescription drugs like Zohydro in work environments. It is illegal for a business to fire someone for taking a drug which they are legally-prescribed, but using a drug as powerful as this one could render a person nearly useless in their capacity as an employee.
As painkiller abuse death tolls continually rise (14.7 people out of every 100,000 in Washington State, 16.5 in Florida, and a staggering 27 in New Mexico), the prospect of introducing yet another, substantially more potent drug into the market seems nonsensical. Nevertheless, Zohydro is already FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved, and is available for prescription at the time of this writing. Even with programs in place like drug-return policies at local hospitals, the dangers inherent in Zohydro seem to outweigh the benefits by a long shot.
