How To Help Fight Youth Prescription Drug Abuse

Millions of Americans suffer daily with chronic pain.  This pain can make even the simplest tasks difficult and significantly impede everyday life.  Many who endure chronic pain must turn to their doctors for relief.  The solution is most often to take a pill.  

Although prescription opioids have their place in pain relief, it’s clear doctors have been overprescribing in recent years.  Since 1999, sales of these medications have quadrupled.  In 2013, enough opioid prescriptions were written for every adult in America to have their own bottle of pills.

Regular use can cause extreme dependence and lead to overdose and death.  Between 1999 and 2014, 165,000 people died from opioid overdose.  They are also often a stepping stone to street drugs such as heroin.  Sadly, four out of five heroin users started out by abusing prescription painkillers.

Opioid Abuse in Youth: The Facts

A group with severe exposure to the opioid epidemic are youth.  Although youth can be prescribed opioids, abuse is most often from non-prescribed pills.  In 2014, 467,000 youth used nonprescription painkillers and 168,000 were clinically addicted.

So why do young people use opioids?  They might believe pills prescribed by a doctor are safer or more acceptable than street drugs.  It is also believed that opioids are popular with the younger generation becasause  they use it to help them cope with social, emotional and academic stress.  This can lead to destructive patterns and life-long dependency.

Reducing Opioid Abuse

There are several ways to reduce prescription drug abuse in youth.  One way is to keep the pills out of their hands by storing opioids in locked containers.  The most common method for minors to receive prescription medications is through a friend or relative.  Never give prescriptions to someone else.  This increases the chance of pills ending up in the hands of kids, encouraging abuse and addiction.

It’s also important to properly discard unused or expired pills.  One way to throw out opioids is to crush them and combine the waste in a bag with unwanted materials, such as used coffee grounds.  The best way to remove opioids from the home is through a drug take-back program.  There are certified drop-off centers around the country where you can take your medications for safe disposal.

Our solution to cut opioid abuse in youth calls for a shift in the way pain is treated.  This starts with LidoPro®.  LidoPro® Ointment and LidoPro® Patch are topical pain relievers, meaning each ingredient is absorbed through the skin.  Our formula acts on your specific pain areas to bring rapid and lasting relief.  LidoPro® is safer for the consumer and non-addictive, limiting your child’s exposure to potential abuse.  We pride ourselves in creating sustainable pain relief products designed to limit the circulation of opioids.  To join our effort against prescription drug abuse in youth, please contact us to learn more and order today.

Patient Safety

Patient safety is our top priority at Terrain Pharmaceuticals.  Every measure is taken to ensure the end-user is treated safely and effectively.  Each product is tested to prove it maintains integrity from start to finish.  This begins with our topical brand of pain relief.  Our specially designed formula was developed to curb the negative side effects commonly associated with oral medications, more specifically oral NSAIDs.

NSAIDs, or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, are used to control pain and inflammation.  They work by blocking enzymes in the body that help make chemicals that signal pain.  When these enzymes are blocked, you feel less pain.  The consequences of ingesting oral NSAIDs vary from heartburn and nausea to allergic reactions and intestinal bleeding.  Higher risks of these side effects are linked to those over the age of 60, people prescribed with medications for high blood pressure, or women who are pregnant or nursing.  Our specialty is blocking pain, but we are also committed to the safety of each consumer.

Topical administration significantly reduces the above side effects of NSAIDs.  Our products allow for direct application to your specific area of pain.  Isolating the source also encourages faster and more effective relief.  The efficacy and reliability of our LidoPro® brand is certified through weeks of testing before and after manufacturing, including a 40-day clinical trial.

Prior to production, the bulk formula is sampled multiple times in a 28-day period to validate no formation or growth of various microorganisms such as S. aureus and E. coli.  Once the results are accepted, we run additional tests to confirm the stability of the finished product.  These confirm that the active ingredient strengths on our labels are maintained and various properties such as pH and viscosity remain in a specified range.  After all testing is approved, our quality team releases the lot and maintains lot specific documentation.

Before the first tube of LidoPro® Ointment was ever brought to market, we sent the formula to a lab for clinical trials.  Individuals aged 18-60, were provided samples of LidoPro® to apply below their shoulder. After weeks of applications and rest periods, monitored by trained laboratory personnel, ZERO subjects reported an adverse reaction of any kind.  The results concluded in this study matched our expectations; LidoPro® shows no identifiable signs or symptoms of irritation or contact allergy.  Lab Tested, Patient Approved!

After taking a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into each and every lot of our LidoPro® product line, we hope that you will trust our brand like several thousands of others have for years! 

Please contact us if you have any additional questions or comments. We love to hear feedback!

Opioid Addiction Facts

When most people think of pain relief, they assume ingesting a pill is the only option. However, there are many topical pain relievers on the market today such as ointments and patches. Topical Pain relievers are applied locally to skin or to specialized compartments of the body to modify pain by actions on sensory nerve endings and/or adjacent cellular elements. With this approach, there are low systemic drug levels, good tolerability, low addiction rates, and few drug interactions.

With many alternatives to narcotic pain relievers we are still seeing a wide range of our country addicted today.  Read through these staggering facts before you decide a pill is the only option to get relief.

Opioid Addiction Facts:

• Opioids are any of various compounds that bind to specific receptors in the central nervous system and have analgesic (pain relieving) effects including prescription medications such as oxycodone and hydrocodone and illicit substances such as heroin.
• Opioid addiction is federally described as a progressive, treatable brain disease.
• Any type of opioid can trigger latent chronic addiction brain disease.
• 24.6 million people 12 or older (9.4% of the population) live with substance dependence or abuse.
• 1.9 million Americans live with prescription opioid abuse or dependence.
• Opioid addiction disease occurs in every American State, County, socio-economic and ethnic group.
• 23% of heroin users develop chronic opioid addiction disease first.

National Opioid Overdose Epidemic:

• Over 100 Americans died from overdose deaths each day in 2013.
• 46 Americans die each day from prescription opioid overdoses; two deaths an hour, 17,000 annually.
• While illicit opioid heroin poisonings increased by 12.4% from 1999 to 2002, the number of prescription opioid analgesic poisonings in the United States increased by 91.2% during that same time period.
• Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2013, greater than car accidents and homicide.
• About 75% of opioid addiction disease patients switch to heroin as a cheaper opioid source.
• In 2012, 259 million opioid pain medication prescriptions were written, enough for every adult in America to have a bottle of pills.

Source: American Society of Addiction Medicine 

If you would like more information on Terrain Pharmaceutical products and what we are doing to help combat this epidemic, please contact us HERE.