Al Jazeera - by Amel Ahmed Prescriptions for painkillers in the United States have nearly tripled in the past two decades and fatal overdoses reached epidemic levels, exceeding those from heroin and cocaine combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the same time, the first-ever global analysis of illicit drug abuse, published this month in the British medical journal The Lancet, found that addictions to heroin and popular painkillers, including Vicodin and OxyContin, kill the most people and cause the greatest health burden, compared with illicit drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. High-income nations, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, had the highest rates of abuse, 20 times greater than in the least affected countries, according to the Lancet study. In the United States, enough painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate every American adult around the clock for one month. Dr. Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, told Al Jazeera that the U.S. is facing a dangerous epidemic of overdoses and addictions related to painkillers. “According to the CDC, this is the worst drug epidemic in U.S. history,” he said. “CDC has data demonstrating that around the same time doctors began aggressively prescribing these medications in the late 1990s, there have been parallel increases in rates of addiction.” The Food and Drug Administration, Kolodny said, is “failing miserably” at curbing the epidemic. In my post The Famous 50% (Lawful Gun Owners Who Should Be Disarmed), I noted the following:
Drug abuse is also difficult to define, let's take a survey that says 10% of Americans abuse illicit drugs.
That's another 10% of gun owners who need to be disarmed for drug abuse.
Perhaps that needs to be upgraded already?
