A abuser of painkillers risks becoming addicted to heroin. The American health authorities point the finger at this danger while the consumption of analgesics explodes.
Switching from painkillers to heroin is not that uncommon. According to a report by the US administration’s health services, taking painkillers without a medical reason increases the risk of becoming addicted to heroin. Their study found that Americans aged 12 to 49 who took painkillers illegally were 19 times more likely to have started using heroin in the past year than other people in this age group. In fact, nearly 80% of new heroin addicts were pain medication users. And the escalation can be rapid since, according to this report, 3.6% of people became addicted to heroin within five years.
“Prescription pain relievers, when used as directed, can be of enormous benefit to patients, but their non-medical use can lead to addiction, serious bodily harm and even death,” warns Dr. Peter Delany , the director of the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics.
“The abuse of painkillers is an epidemic”
If the American health authorities are sounding the alarm, it is because between 2008 and 2011, the number of people addicted to heroin more than doubled, from 179,000 to 369,000. analgesics followed the same curve. Between 1999 and 2010, the CDC identified nearly 48,000 women who died from the abuse of prescription painkillers. Every day in the United States, overdoses of prescription opioid analgesics cause the death of 18 women, or more than 6,600 deaths in 2010. Even more worrying for the American authorities, this preventable excess mortality has increased by more than 400%. among women since 1999, compared to 265% among men. For the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the abuse of opioid pain relievers has become “a real epidemic”.
The French are less in danger than the Americans
In France, the consumption of opiate painkillers is undoubtedly less strong, in particular because their access is much more restricted. The DRAMES (Deaths in Relation to Drug and Substance Abuse) study reported 376 deaths in 2010, due to heroin overdoses, opioid substitution treatments and pain medication. But unfortunately we do not have any precise and exhaustive data on this phenomenon.
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