Morphine - Usage Trends

Usage Trends

Morphine enters the illegal market in two ways. Most of it is transformed into heroin in illegal laboratories in Asia, Mexico, and South America and smuggled into the United States. The rest is diverted from its legal use through theft from pharmacies or through "doctor shopping" for prescriptions. An illegal practice, doctor shopping occurs when an individual continually switches physicians so that he or she can get enough of a prescription drug to feed an addiction. This makes it difficult for physicians to track whether the patient has already been prescribed the same drug by another physician. Additionally, some morphine fatalities can be tied to people legally taking the drug, but taking it in higher doses than recommended, or combining it with other painkillers, alcohol, or cocaine.

People of all ages and income levels abuse prescription painkillers, sometimes with fatal results. Users often start taking the prescription drug for a painful condition and wind up abusing it for the mental effects. It is difficult to determine the number of deaths caused by morphine every year because heroin shows up as morphine on drug tests. Sometimes the cause of death is simply listed as "opiate overdose," and this could also include codeine or other prescription painkillers.

According to the "2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)," an estimated 119,000 teenagers between twelve and eighteen had tried heroin at least once. If given a drug test, these teenagers would test positive for morphine. Emergency room mentions of pure morphine are much lower than those for heroin, OxyContin, and Vicodin. The strength of morphine, the difficulties doctors face prescribing it, and the close watch kept on supplies in hospitals and pharmacies tend to keep illegal supplies low. Plus, the higher purity of illegal heroin makes that drug more attractive for abuse.