Addiction of Prescription Opiates Opioid abuse is a worldwide problem for both industrialized and developing countries (Jenkinson & Ravert, 2013). Opium has been used for an analgesic for at least 3500 years and is derived from the papaver somniferum plant, known as the poppy. By the eighteenth-century, opium was known to control pain by physicians with a limited anxiolytic and antipsychotic effect (Doweiko, 2012). By the time of the Civil War, morphine, which is a derivative of opium, was commonly…
Words 596 - Pages 3