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"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.
In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.
The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.
Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.
They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.
Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.
Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.
The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.
Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.
"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.
Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.
Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.
One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.
Mike Stobbe of the Associated Press contributed reporting.
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I wonder if they meant to use the word "terrible". Sorry to say, until we have a better solution, these drugs are the only ones that tackle severe pain. You can only take so much Tylenol, Aspirin, or Aleve. There is a 4g/day limit for Tylenol and you can't take it for long periods of time because of it's effects on the liver and your hearing. Aspirin causes blood thinning and ulcers and Aleve is even worse for ulcers.
I think instead we need to work on HOW we prescribe these drugs. Patients need to be required to check in with their doctors more often, be educated on the risks and how to prevent addiction, they need to be monitored for addiction, and when they no longer need the medication they need to be tapered off of it if they've been on it a long time. I don't know anyone that was prescribed pain medication short-term and took it as directed that became addicted. You start down the path of addiction when you begin to enjoy taking medication. When you take it for pain, this isn't the case. You look forward to relief, but dread the side effects. In my state, anesthesiologists have private practices for pain management. When someone goes to their general practitioner with pain, they are referred to pain specialists who are better equipped to treat, educate, and monitor.
One day, we will synthesize a drug (likely an opiate) that tackles pain without any addictive qualities. Labs have been working on it for a long time. To anyone that thinks it can't be done: Loperamide, the active ingredient in Immodium is one of the most effective drugs at stopping diarrhea. It is not addictive. It does not produce euphoria. It is an opiate, nearly chemically identical to Demerol. Fact.
I would like to see an analysis of the typical overdose death. My bet is that it would show multiple drugs used (and likely alcohol) as well. Many of these drugs (cited in the article) are relatively safe if taken as prescribed. Overdose can occur if the narcotic drug is taken as prescribed, but the patient is also drinking or using other depressant drugs. Valium, is another relatively safe drug but too often taken way beyond the prescribed dosage and/or with alcohol, which makes it dangerous.
Vicodin is actually a fairly mild narcotic and is especially useful for periodic severe pain - it is not any where near as potent as oxycontin (uncombined oxycodone), which is useful primarily for people like cancer patients or burn victims who have chronic enduring pain but not for periodic severe pain.
I would hate to see Vicodin or other relatively mild narcotics and muscle relaxants be scheduled or restricted as severly as oxycontin, morphine and other much more powerful narcotics. Better management of prescriptions by physicians and pharmacists is needed - not restrictions on the access to pain relief to people who truly need it.
That's another instance where doctors should be talking to their patients. Some are not taking the time to tell their patients that Vicodin is a Tylenol-mixed (acetaminophen + hydrocodone) drug and that there is a limit on how much they can take. Sure, they could get that information from the pamphlet provided by the pharmacy, but too few people take the time to read that and assume their doctor had told them everything. If their pain warrants stronger medication, they should be switched to something else instead of taking more acetaminophen. I personally know a man that died this way. He wasn't opiate-naive and it was determined he died of liver failure, not from pulmonary edema, which is often the cause when an opiate causes the death. Many of these weaker mixed drugs (such as Darvocet) are being pulled from the market because of the number of acetaminophen related deaths caused by people popping more and more pills trying to get relief.
You're right, benzodiazepenes shouldn't be co-prescribed with narcotic pain medication.
"I would like to see an analysis of the typical overdose death."
As per my recollection, one state (KY) that recently did so revealed an overwhelming statistical pattern of overdose ER admissions involving a combination of opiates, benzodiazepines (most notably, Xanax), and alcohol. Apparently, this cocktail has proven to be particularly lethal.
No sympathy here. None what so ever. Nobody forced these people to take these drugs. Most of them did not have a prescription for these meds but obtained them illegally. Those that did have a prescription obtained them from several different doctors and pharmacies. There needs to be a national list that keeps this kind of doctor shopping from happening.
Oh, let them shop. This is a self-correcting issue. When they kill themselves, they are no longer a problem.
Wow is that cold. I pray to God you never know the experience of losing your child to an overdose. And if you think it can't happen to you, you are 100% wrong. I used to think the same thing. Peace.
Can we legalize pot now? Because if there was 1 cannabis related death in all of that, I'll be surprised!
This is not surprising at all - big pharma, doctors and the FDA are all just legal drug dealers.....
I wholeheartedly agree. They make people think there are no other treatments in this world. There are.
Ditto. I am sensitive to many drugs, and when I report the side effects to my doctors, they usually shrug and say something like "I never heard of that before." After hives, rashes, stupor, sleeplessness, anxiety, nausea, etc., I question adding any drugs to this regimen very explicitly. Doctors don't pay much attention to what I already take or to conditions that patients might already have, e.g., diabetes, depression, elevated blood pressure, or heart problems, that may be exacerbated by the drugs they are prescribing. What I wonder is how many of these deaths were caused by adding one drug too many to a patient's daily cocktail of drugs.
This is the reality of the war on drugs, and its utter failure. Addiction is a mental illness. Whether its addiction to drugs, or food, or sex.
Criminalizing and stigmatizing sick people, is not how you help them. And they aren't going to seek help when its going to be used against them. Or get the police after them. Then there's the blackmarket prohibition has created, and all the terrible drugs people are exposed to because of it. Illegal drug dealers will sell anything, and cut their drugs with all kinds of dangerous substances. You don't see dangerous moonshine sold out of liquor stores, or other drugs., or god knows what else. And they don't cut the booze with rubbing alcohol to make it go further. Why?, because its all regulated and controlled, as it should be. The same should be true with drugs.
The government should decriminalize the safer drugs, and control it, and put the illegal dealers out of business. If people can get what they need from a proper store, they wont use more dangerous drugs, or try "whatever" trying to get high. And addicts will be more willing to seek help, if its not labeling them a criminal by doing so.
I spent considerable time in WV and KY and I have seen the results of the pill plague first hand. In the eastern KY counties alone there are an average of eighty overdose cases monthly. Empirical observation tells me that southern WV is equal to the eastern KY figures. I have lost a niece, a nephew, a half dozen cousins and numerous friends and acquaintances. This @!$%# kills. The response of the criminal injustice system is jail, which is as useless as tits on a boar hog as a tool for remedying the problem. In many cases the pill doctors operate with impunity posing as legitimate physicians...make that, pill docs posing as legitimate physicians who make generous political contributions. In a situation I witnessed first hand, a notorious pill pusher operated for over twenty years, with the local authorities turning a blind eye, due to the reasons aforementioned. The feds busted her a year ago...she got a six month sentence. This woman is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, but she was always kind to Big Brother. The "war on drugs" is over forty years old, and has cost us a trillion dollars; the only folks benefitting are the trough wallowers who have poisoned the criminal injustice system for their own selfish interests. Start at the source, and within, if you really want to help. Fat chance!
We obviously need to ban all pain medicines.
First of all this article failed to recognize methadone as one of the main reason for drug overdoses. And that methadone clinics being lax at dispensing the drug since 2000 has resulted in a over 600 percent increase in methadone related deaths. Secondly the person who said that the problem dies when the person dies, does not realize that many of these people is a person who went to his 21st birthday and was given alcohol and a oxycontin pill for the first time and died in his sleep, or a person who had a toothache and was given a methadone pill from a mysterious person and died in her sleep. Thirdly, many of these overdose victims were prescribed oxycontin by a doctor and because they were one of those people that had that had that "hidden propensity to heroin addiction". (oxycontin has the same molecular make up as heroin and should be illegal) and are hopelessly addicted, the urge to do have that high is so strong many switch to heroin and die if the oxycontin has not already killed them. This addiction has nothing to do with human weakness or a moral issue, opiates are a dangerous drug, yet they are being prescribed more than they ever have. We have the same pain we had 30 years ago, why are doctors writing so many prescriptions? Why can't they address other avenues first? Counseling, anti-enflammatory drugs, muscle relaxers, rehabs, etc. The CDC has just issued a report that overdoses are continuing to climb each year and when you get that tragic phone call that your loved one died, you will be eating your words. Why do we have this problem in the US and other countries that have children that listen to the same music, same culture do not have nearly as high as a overdose rate? Well what do we have that they do not?! For one they have government run medical for the citizens. We have for profit medical run agencies. We have pharmaceutical companies that are pushing medications into our market, focused solely on profit and due to the fact that Big Pharma is a trillion dollar lobby and has TREMENDOUS POWER over our government and other agencies writing checks to congress members etc. that is why oxycontin is still legally prescribed, and methadone clinics still allow their patients to go home with their medication right away. As a result we have people dying left and right, like flies. And if you think serves them right, well most young people have a sense of invincibleness that does not leave them until they reach the age of 25, think back when you did something when you were young and look at it now and think what was I thinking... to think a young person deserves to die for this is very wrong... We have pharmaceutical commercials sending subliminal messages to our young and impressionable people to believe one pill will solve all of life's problems, and leave out any side effects or say it so quick you cannot understand it. Second we have HMO's you know, the ones that say no when you want to try and put your kids or loved one into a rehab, or better yet the ones that are so expensive people cannot afford them... Both of these agencies operate differently but they also have one common element - greed. The FDA is supposed to be our watchdog that dangerous, unnecessary or too many drugs are being prescribed, but they have become the pharmaceutical's lap dog. The problem entails a major overhaul of the way our government is run. I am not sure if it even can be done. People flip out over socialized medicine. But I honestly do not think medicine and profit mix, there is too high of a chance for corruption and greed, and I think that is what is happening in our country. That is a big reason for this problem.