Policy Impact: Prescription Painkiller Overdoses

Center for Disease Control and Prevention

What’s the Issue?
In a period of nine months, a tiny Kentucky county of fewer than 12,000 people sees a 53-year-old mother, her 35-year-old son, and seven others die by overdosing on pain medications obtained from pain clinics in Florida.  In Utah, a 13-year-old fatally overdoses on oxycodone pills taken from a friend’s grandmother.  A 20-year-old Boston man dies from an overdose of methadone, only a year after his friend also died from a prescription drug overdose.
These are not isolated events. Drug overdose death rates in the United States have more than tripled since 1990 and have never been higher.  In 2008, more than 36,000 people died from drug overdoses, and most of these deaths were caused by prescription drugs.

100 people die from drug overdoses every day in the United States.

CDC Webiste:  http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/rxbrief/