Problem Pitch Presentation
My group was assigned to put together our Problem Pitch Presentation on opioid addiction. We decided to focus in on addiction in adolescents and young adults. It was very eye-opening doing initial research and finding how many young adults opioid addiction affects. We chose to interview Andrew Cunningham, a student from the University of Cincinnati who acted in a video that spread awareness about heroin addiction. The organization he got involved with for the video was called KPG Creative. The heroin awareness was a PSA video created for a recently made app for schools. The video itself is focused on warning students of the dangers of heroin, saying its only goal is to kill you. I think it’s important that people are aware of the danger of heroin, but I personally don’t know how effective the video would be. It seemed to be intended to cause the viewer to fear heroin, but from my knowledge, many people who end up trying heroin try it because of many external factors and most are already aware of the dangers. I found our interview interesting because we were able to hear a student’s perspective and how he was able to get involved in bringing awareness to the issue, but I would also have liked to hear from someone with even more expertise on the topic.
I was intrigued by all the information I found researching for this project, and the many different perspectives on the issues. One thing I learned was that the three spikes in increasing opioid overdoses were caused by an increase in opioid prescriptions, an increase in heroin over doses, and most recently, an increase in deaths caused by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. This struck me because a lot of these overdoses are caused cocaine laced with fentanyl, and the user has no idea that the drug is laced. This is particularly alarming for a student on a college campus who hears about many fellow students unfortunately experimenting with drugs such as cocaine. Another thing I found interesting was that all the organizations I came across had a similar stance on that people with addictions should be able to receive help without being charged for drug possession and that access to scientifically proven treatment should be expanded. This surprised me because these are not always popular opinions among the general population, but the organizations trying to stop the opioid crisis all seemed to agree on it.
Getting involved in preventing addiction is not easy for college students to do since most of the actions that should be taken would be done by medical professionals, government representatives, and people who know personally someone struggling with an opioid addiction. There are still a few ways I learned to get involved such as donating to causes that will increase public education, increase access to treatment, and advocate for federal and state laws to be changed. There are also a few student organizations at the University of Cincinnati that try to tackle these issues. I would be interested in joining one of these organizations in the future and seeing what action is taken to prevent opioid addictions or raise awareness about the issue.
I was intrigued by all the information I found researching for this project, and the many different perspectives on the issues. One thing I learned was that the three spikes in increasing opioid overdoses were caused by an increase in opioid prescriptions, an increase in heroin over doses, and most recently, an increase in deaths caused by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. This struck me because a lot of these overdoses are caused cocaine laced with fentanyl, and the user has no idea that the drug is laced. This is particularly alarming for a student on a college campus who hears about many fellow students unfortunately experimenting with drugs such as cocaine. Another thing I found interesting was that all the organizations I came across had a similar stance on that people with addictions should be able to receive help without being charged for drug possession and that access to scientifically proven treatment should be expanded. This surprised me because these are not always popular opinions among the general population, but the organizations trying to stop the opioid crisis all seemed to agree on it.
Getting involved in preventing addiction is not easy for college students to do since most of the actions that should be taken would be done by medical professionals, government representatives, and people who know personally someone struggling with an opioid addiction. There are still a few ways I learned to get involved such as donating to causes that will increase public education, increase access to treatment, and advocate for federal and state laws to be changed. There are also a few student organizations at the University of Cincinnati that try to tackle these issues. I would be interested in joining one of these organizations in the future and seeing what action is taken to prevent opioid addictions or raise awareness about the issue.
