Information Project  

Often, medications for severe pain are made from opoid plants.  These purple-flowered plants produce opium poppies, which are used in the production of opium.  Opium is what we in the U.S. call narcotics, and they dull and numb one who ingests what may be made by these opium poppies, as there are several drugs that have been developed from what these plants provide that are these prevalent narcotics. 

Some medications are from natural opium, such as cocaine, or the opiates from the poppy seeds can be used to create semi-synthetic medications, such as Heroin.  Heroin was marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals for 12 years by telling others that it was a non-addicting form of morphine (pure opiate drug), since there were many soldiers addicted to morphine after the civil war.  During that same period of time, Bayer marketed heroin for children who coughed.  Of course, Heroin is very addictive, and is no longer available.

While Poppy plants exist and are grown in areas of IndoChina, Afghanistan is the number one producer of poppy plants.  The United States is the number one country that consumes what is derived from these plants.  Opium-derived medicines once could be bought freely in the U.S. by anyone less than 100 years ago.  Yet now, they are classified by the Drug Enforcement Agency as narcotics, and are scheduled by them, according to the danger they potentially could cause another who takes them. 

While prescribed to patients for such issues aside from pain on occasion, such as chronic coughing and diarrhea, their greatest benefit is for the relief of pain experienced often by patients is the primary reason doctors prescribe opoid drugs, and they do so often.  Vicodin, a mild narcotic, is the most frequently prescribed medication in the U.S. presently.

If patients take opium-derived drugs for long periods of time, tolerance may develop, and the patient may need to take more of the drug to acquire an effect of relief.  In addition, the patient may develop a dependence on these types of drugs, which can lead to addiction and possible abuse.  This is why overdose of these types of medicine occur- as the reasons for taking these drugs initially become replaced with relief due to addiction in some who take narcotics for a long period of time. 

Dan Abshear