Americans are addicted to painkillers and they are dying more and more. This is what emerges from the latest report from the US Center for Disease Control (CDC). In this report, we learn that deaths from overdose of analgesic drugs have doubled, from 6.1 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 1999 to 13.1 cases in 202. At the same time, heroin overdoses have tripled. According to the same report, in 2012 alone the CDC recorded 41,502 drug overdose deaths, including 16,007 from overuse of opium-based drugs and 5,925 from heroin.
Already a year ago, a study published in the professional journal Pediatrics indicated that at least 1 in 10 teenagers had gone to the emergency room for abusing a pain reliever or sedative during the year.
In July, the CDC bid, indicating that every day in the United States 46 people die from an overdose of prescription painkillers.
“In 2012, doctors wrote at least 259 million prescriptions for pain relievers. Enough for every adult on American soil to have their own little supply of drugs,” the CDC explains.
“In fact, we are facing a sort of epidemic of opioid abuse in which doctors, users, health care systems and the environment all play a role,” CDC officials say. They therefore recommend the establishment of surveillance programs that would allow States to identify areas where the prescription of such drugs is more widespread in order to implement perfectly targeted prevention policies.
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