Andreas, Briana, Grant, Julia

How Doctors Helped Drive the Addiction Crisis

The main idea of this article is that doctors were a driving force in the addition crisis. Some of
the claims from this article include (1) that the way the doctors feel the use of the drugs to treat
pain is a large driving factor of the opioid epidemic. Another claim is (2) that the consequences
of opioid use are staggered. (3) And nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are safer and more
effective for painful conditions instead of opioid painkillers. The last claim is (4) that the medical
profession should change by educating and training medical students as well as residents about
safe opioid use. These claims connect because the evidence supporting these claims shows
that the doctors have been using the opioids when there is a safer alternative drug. Claim one
connects to claim two because some of the evidence used for claim one says that opioids were
used at first to treat terminal diseases at first but then it progressed into using the opioids to
treat chronic diseases. This relates to the second claim because using opioids for chronic
diseases causes more effects such as emergency room visits which is a piece of evidence for
the second claim. Claim three relates to claim two because evidence from claim two says that
opioid use causes 39% of emergency room visits for nonmedical drug use. This relates to claim
three because opioids are very addictive and this evidence supports that nonsteroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs are safer than addictive opioids. Claim three relates to claim four
because claim four is a solution to the problems that the previous claims and evidence mention.

The author of this article Richard A. Friedman, is a professor of clinical psychiatry and he is also
the director of a psychopharmacology therefore this article is credible. The evidence he uses to
support his argument is credible because he cites statistics from Danish studies about non
opioid users.