My interest in this topic began since I saw a documentary called “The Pharmacist” which is about Dan Schneider, a small-town pharmacist in Louisiana, to identify his son’s killer. His son was killed while he was trying to buy crack in New Orleans. This led Schneider to gather evidence against a Doctor in New Orleans, owner of a pain management clinic who was prescribing great quantities of Oxycontin in which Purdue Pharma was the one that developed this addicting pill. Why prescribe opioids if there is a factor in which people will become addicting? Why is this still allowed? These were just some of the questions that came to my mind as I watched this. This perhaps is the delineation of why there are so many Americans on the streets being drug addicts. One day going home on the subway platform there was a man with so many rashes and marks and I saw he was injecting himself with something. Seeing this was very indignant because we as society do not realize the major problem of opioids and addiction. Therefore, I want to further learn about this topic as well as inform people how crucial it is to understand and learn more about how Pharmaceutical companies are the major influencers to opioids addiction in the U.S.
During my research I expect to find arguments against pharmaceutical companies and how different people have been affected by the opioids business. Having some narratives will help the reader to connect more to the topic and understand better how opioids can change people’s lives Also, I expect to find statistics showing the number of Americans that are dying of overdose. Moreover, find arguments of failures of the regulatory agencies, federal agencies and state agencies to control this epidemic and the counterarguments which are the federal agencies defending their acts on how they are regulating the pharmaceutical companies. But is it enough? If I find information that goes completely against what I expected to find I will definitely try to counter it and find a way to defend my argument. I will do further research and try to validate my argument with proper evidence. Thus, some of the genres that will give me some good information are articles which can give me some good evidence to support my argument. Also, having narratives can be very helpful to show people experiences with opioids which I can find such as documentaries or written.
Adrianna, your draft introduction is excellent and your responses to the questions posed are interesting and thoughtful. Is this your official research question? “Why prescribe opioids if there is a factor in which people will become addicting?” Please confirm. Thanks.