Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans Than Illegal Drugs

[babylonsister]

Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans Than Illegal Drugs

by: David Gutierrez, Natural News


Heath Ledger found dead from prescription drug abuse. (Photo: AP)


A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death.

An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem.

"The abuse has reached epidemic proportions," said Lisa McElhaney, a sergeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff's Office. "It's just explosive."

In 2007, cocaine was responsible for 843 deaths, heroin for 121, methamphetamines for 25 and marijuana for zero, for a total of 989 deaths. In contrast, 2,328 people were killed by opioid painkillers, including Vicodin and Oxycontin, and 743 were killed by drugs containing benzodiazepine, including the depressants Valium and Xanax.

Alcohol directly caused 466 deaths, but was found in the bodies of 4,179 cadavers in all.

While the number of dead bodies containing heroin jumped 14 percent from the prior year, to a total of 110, the number of deaths influenced by the painkiller oxycodone increased by 36 percent, to a total of 1,253.

Across the country, prescription drugs have become an increasingly popular alternative to the more difficult to acquire illegal drugs. Even as illegal drug use among teenagers have fallen, prescription drug abuse has increased. For example, while 4 percent of U.S. 12th graders were using Oxycontin in 2002, by 2005 that number had increased to 5.5 percent.

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http://www.truthout.org/111208HA

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Listening to Slush Limbow can be hazardous to your health.... or

at least emulating him can.

[nichomachus]

2. Just because it's "legal" doesn't mean it's not being abused

[Cleita]

3. I worked with a woman who was going

to five different doctors to get a prescription for pain medication for her "headaches". Of course she was taking five times the dose of her prescription to get high. It affected her work and I found myself redoing everything she worked on. Our employer and I finally staged an intervention after we got her to admit she was doing this. We also informed the doctors involved about what was going on. She couldn't stick with the program though and soon left the company. I don't know what ever happened to her. I hope she finally did get clean and sober.