This practice can lead to disaster. In a report from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), Susan Okie, M.D. New England Journal of Medicine states, "more than 3% of U.S. adults currently receive long-term opioid therapy for chronic non-cancer pain, and patients taking high daily doses appear to be at increased risk for overdose" (2010, Nov. 18). Long term usage of FDA approved opioids can lead to physical and psychological addiction. In a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, samhsa.gov, reports, "opioids addiction is a chronic disease, like heart disease or diabetes. A chronic disease is a medical condition for life" (2009). Addiction is known to cause a change in the brain and has an effect on one's behavior, causing a person to experience serious psychological and physical reactions known as withdrawal symptoms when the drug is not available. If this were not enough to cause concern, some FDA approved drugs have proven to be responsible for numerous deaths. According to Denise Mann WebMD Health News, "40% of the deaths in 2008 involved the use of prescription opioid pain relievers such as codeine, Fentanyl, Hydrocodone, Morphine, and Oxycodone, the new report shows. This is up from 25% in 1999. The number of drug-related deaths involving opioids actually tripled from 1999 to 2008" (Mann, 2012, June 29). Many of the drugs that had been approved by the FDA are later pulled off pharmacy shelves because of adverse, and sometimes deadly, consequences to the patient. For example, in 1957 Propoxyphene was approved by the FDA for the relief of mild to moderate pain and became the drug of choice for prescribing doctors from 1974 through 2010. However, in 2010 report the FDA stated, "the U.S. Food and Drug Administration" (FDA) is recommending against continued prescribing and use of the pain reliever propoxyphene because new data show that the drug can cause serious toxicity to the heart, even when used at therapeutic doses" (2010, Nov.
