Big Pharma: We Kill More Than Heroin & Cocaine Combined
Painkiller ‘Epidemic’ Deepens in U.S.
By: Jason Kane
Doctors prescribed enough pain medication last year to partially numb every American adult around-the-clock for a month. So much of the stuff is now being handed out that lethal overdoses tripled in the past decade, according to a new report from the CDC out Tuesday.
In fact, painkillers now cause more deaths in America than cocaine and heroin combined. And if the numbers keep rising, they’ll soon outpace car crashes as the nation’s leading cause of fatal injury.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden has one word for that: Epidemic.
“Now the burden of dangerous drugs is being created more by a few irresponsible doctors than by drug pushers on street corners,” he said.
The fact that prescription drug abuse is a growing problem may not be news, but the CDC Vital Signs report brings the most recent statistics into startling focus. And together, they illustrate a trend that shows no sign of slowing any time soon.
Among the findings:
- Overdoses from prescription painkillers — including oxycodone, methadone and hydrocodone (Vicodin) — killed 15,000 people last year. That’s more than 40 per day.
- In 2010, 1 in 20 people in the United States (age 12 or older) reported using prescription painkillers for non-medical reasons in the past year.
- The quantity of prescription painkillers sold to pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors’ offices in 2010 had quadrupled since 1999. (more…)