Daybreak

CDC Report on Prescription Painkiller Overdose is a Call To Action | The Partnership at Drugfree.org

At the CDC, we deal with the numbers and statistics affecting the public’s health every day. I’ve worked here for most of my career, and rarely do these numbers reveal the full and tragic story they actually represent. The CDC’s report this week on prescription painkiller overdoses is one of these rare instances, confirming a story many of us have heard in communities across America.

Prescription painkillers (drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone) killed nearly 15,000 people in 2008—one person every forty minutes. These were husbands and sons, mothers and daughters, often struggling with addiction for months or years before losing their lives. And the problem has never been worse. For every person who died of a prescription painkiller overdose in 1999, nearly four died in 2008. We are in the midst of an epidemic.

But the number of deaths isn’t the whole story. This sharp rise in prescription painkiller overdoses parallels a similarly large increase in painkiller sales. Four times as many prescription painkillers were sold in the U.S. last year than in 1999.

via CDC Report on Prescription Painkiller Overdose is a Call To Action | The Partnership at Drugfree.org (http://www NULL.drugfree NULL.org/join-together/addiction/cdc-report-on-prescription-painkiller-overdose-is-a-call-to-action?utm_source=Join+Together+Weekly&utm_campaign=e3683d2881-JT+Weekly+News%3A+A+Picture+May+Be+Worth NULL. NULL. NULL.&utm_medium=email).