Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., outpacing car accidents and guns.
47,055 lethal drug overdoses occurred in 2014, according to the latest data from the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
Of those deaths:
- Roughly 27,000 were from Prescription Drugs
More than half of the deaths by drug overdose were from LEGAL drugs prescribed by licensed physicians!
Apparently cocaine and methamphetamine don't hold a freaking candle to the legal stuff!
Furthermore:
- 18,893 of the roughly 27,000 deaths were caused by "legal" opioids (mainly oxycodone)
That's roughly 70% of all prescription drug overdose deaths caused by a single drug type.
Whether some of these pain pills should even be legal is not a debate I'm looking to start.
However, what we can point out is the main driver behind the issue.
Over Prescription of Opioid Painkillers
Did you know that 259 million prescriptions were written for opioids in 2012? This is enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pain pills.
I mean, is the whole entire country in physical pain???
A glaring issue is full bottles of pain pills being prescribed for short-term pain. Think about it - in most cases you take a few pills, maybe a week or two worth when recovering from an injury or getting your wisdom teeth out for example. Then the pain warrants an advil to get the job done.
Now you have 20 pills or an addictive forming drug sitting in your medicine cabinet collecting dust.
Nothing positive can happen from that.....either nothing happens. Or something negative happens like a teenager gets a hold of them to take to a party next thing you know the kid and his friend are hooked on oxys and cannot get a hold of anymore.
Which leads us to the next step.........
Heroine
Did you know:
Four in five new heroin users started out misusing prescription painkillers.
(YES - oxycotins, vicotins and percocets are a gateway to heroine)Oxy and heroine are derived from same plant, they are fundamentally not that much different.
(they provide the same high and lead to the same addiction, heroine just takes it to sudden overdrive)
And herein lies the problem.
In the past couple years the government and local state agencies have finally started to crack down on the distribution of prescription pain pills. Specifically on the locations dubbed as "pill mills." They have all but eliminated them in Florida, which was previously the hotbed location and that initiative continues throughout the nation.
Total number of prescriptions fell by roughly 10 million from 2012 to 2013.
So if someone addicted to an opioid drug cannot get any of the "legal" ones there is something that they can get.
The illegal kind - Heroine.
- 10,574 deaths were from heroine
That chart is mind blowing. Look at the exponential increase in heroine overdoses in 2013, 2014.
The same time frame that saw the crackdown on the "legal" opioids. I mean in roughly a three year span the number of deaths basically tripled. That is not a coincidence.
Seems the government got 'em hooked, then they took it away to "help."
Heroine became the benefactor. Our society become the subsidizer.
A sad unintended consequence for sure.
