America in grip of painkiller plague

25 November 2015 - 02:25 By Bloomberg

Doctors wrote 259 million opioid prescriptions for Americans in 2012, enough to medicate every adult in the country. Drug overdoses are beginning to eclipse car crashes as a leading cause of accidental death for US adults.A poll out yesterday from the Kaiser Family Foundation added a troubling new number to the accounting: 27% of Americans report that they either have been addicted to prescription painkillers or have a family member or close friend who is.That's roughly 66million US adults for whom the opioid crisis has become intensely personal.The Kaiser Foundation interviewed 1352 respondents from a national sample by phone. The poll has a margin of sampling error of about three percentage points.More than half reported some connection to the epidemic - knowing someone who misused painkillers, was addicted or died from an overdose.If you don't have some kind of personal connection to painkiller abuse, you're in the minority.The demographics of those touched by the crisis skew white, higher income, college-educated, younger and male.Sixteen percent said they knew someone who had died, more than half of them a family member or close friend.Prescription drug addiction and a related heroin epidemic have proven a stubborn public health crisis since painkiller abuse began rising more than a decade ago.From the White House to local precinct houses, government officials have been struggling to figure out how to reverse the trend.Kaiser's poll found strong majorities in support of policy solutions, including drug treatment and tighter scrutiny of prescribers and laws that protect users from being charged if they call for help when addicts overdose. ..

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