Opioid Epidemic in Rural Areas

Opioid Epidemic in Rural Areas

Even after declaring the opioid epidemic a national crisis, policymakers, practitioners,
and other stakeholders have been unable to stop it. Two things lead to the use of opioids in the
rural-urban area: the cultural change in the areas and the prescribing behavior through education.
Opioid drug abuse and overdose have taken millions of lives in rural and urban areas and
continue to do so in the United States. Opioids are extremely addictive drugs that account for
more than half of drug overdoses. As a result, preventive measures must be implemented.
Policies should be in place before any preventative or intervention initiatives. In countering the
problem, this essay explores the policies to help in the opioid epidemic.
Nonmedical prescribed opioid usage is still a significant public health issue that needs to
be addressed, and it is concentrated in parts of the United States with large rural populations,
such as Kentucky, West Virginia, Alaska, and Oklahoma. Nonmedical prescription opioid usage
is a growing public health issue. Overdose fatalities from opioid pain medications have tripled
since 1999, outnumbering those involving heroin and cocaine combined by 2007 (Rigg &
Nicholson, 2019). Much of this rise has been attributed to an increase in the usage of opioid
analgesics, which led to 21% of all poisoning fatalities in 1999 and 37% in 2006. Other data
shows a significant increase in prescription opioid use, misuse and dependence, emergency care
visits, and overdose harm across all age categories in the United States.
Persons in counties outside of metropolitan regions have higher rates of drug poisoning
deaths, particularly opioid deaths, and opioid poisonings in nonmetropolitan counties have
grown at a pace that is more than triple that of metropolitan counties. Even after correcting for
population density, drug-related mortality using opioid analgesics is greater in these rural areas,
and the ratio of nonmedical customers to medical users is also higher. According to Rigg and

3
Nicholson (2019), there are greater rates of death and injury in rural regions, but teenagers are
also more prone to take prescription opioids nonmedical than their urban counterparts.
According to these studies, characteristics such as polysubstance abuse and depression are linked
to nonmedical opioid consumption in rural regions.
Why is nonmedical prescription opioid usage more common in rural regions than in
cities? Surprisingly, there is little empirical data to help us answer this issue. Risk variables that
explain rural-urban disparities in nonmedical prescription opioid usage must differ across rural
and urban geographical settings and be related to either drug use in general or nonmedical
prescription opioid use in particular (Naegle et al., 2020). Although contextual variables of drug
use are crucial in explaining why people take drugs and become addicted, our understanding of
the processes that drive drug use in broadly defined geographical settings remains restricted.
The first is at the macro level, where the social milieu shapes drug availability and usage
norms. According to Naegle et al. (2020), macro-level stressors such as economic deprivation,
inequality, structural discrimination, and other widespread environmental stressors may be risk
factors for drug use. The second factor is the local setting, which includes family dynamics (for
example, supervision, conflict), family composition (for example, older siblings), and family
stress (for example, unemployment). Furthermore, peer pressure is a powerful predictor of drug
usage. The micro-level is the third. Endogenous variables such as genetic vulnerability,
neurobiological characteristics, pharmacological reactivity, and personality qualities such as
experience seeking and impulsivity are endogenous factors. Mental morbidity and gender, and
age strongly impact the proclivity to abuse drugs and develop persistent drug addictions (Naegle
et al., 2020). A drug’s pharmacological qualities are crucial in deciding who takes it and how
they use it.

4
What must be done to stop the opioid crisis and avoid new iatrogenic addiction, overdose,
mortality, and other harms? In dealing with the opioid epidemic, stakeholders need to put
programs like evidence-based strategies through randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However,
years of dedicated, organized, and diligent work will be necessary to limit the current opioid
crisis and mitigate its negative impacts on society. Since at least 2 million people suffer from an
opioid use disorder (OUD) caused by p