Health & Fitness
Prescription Drugs: The Second Leading Cause Of Accidental Death
Attorney Bottaro learned that recent increases in prescription drug abuse is tied to massive increases in accidental deaths. This is now the second leading cause of accidental death to car accidents.
While conducting legal research, I recently came across 2 reports on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (“CDC”) website that blew me away. The first report, “Prescription Drug Overdose: State Health Agencies Respond,” stated:
“By 2007, more teenagers had used opioid analgesics recreationally than used marijuana”; and,
“Overall, the unintentional drug poisoning death rate has been rising in recent years and more than doubled between 1999 and 2006.”
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Wait a minute . . . “more than doubled” in seven years?!? That is mind-boggling. Most people would not be surprised to see car accidents at the top of the list as the leading cause of accidental death. The second report, ”Unintentional Drug Poisoning in the United States," states that in the past decade, accidental drug overdose has now become the second leading cause of accidental death in this country. In 2007, there were almost 28,000 accidental drug overdose deaths. Id.
The first cited report notes that in this time period, there has been a substantial increase in sales of Oxycontin and methadone, the latter of which is commonly prescribed to lower socio-economic people receiving state aid.
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The National Institute on Drug Abuse states that in 2009 there were 7 million users of such drugs without a valid prescription.
While a secondary market for illicit prescription drug trade flourishes, of course, these prescriptions are originally written by licensed physicians and filled by licensed pharmacists. It is a worthwhile question as to why so many prescription drugs are so seemingly easily available? The reports touch on this issue and make recommendations for improvements in monitoring such prescriptions. The Drug Enforcement Adminsitration maintains a webpage heralding its investigations of doctors who illicitly write such prescriptions.
Perhaps it is common knowledge that prescription drug abuse has long been a problem, but these reports opened my eyes to the depth of what can only be described as an epidemic. Tragic.
