Penn. Attorney General
During a decade when doctors wrote more prescriptions for drugs like OxyContin and fentanyl and the diversion of those medication to the illegal market increased, the number of overdoses from opioid analgesics also spiked.
Fatalities from painkiller abuse or misuse stood at nearly one-half of those from car accidents in some states during 2006, a new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. Across the United States, the total number of painkiller poisonings rose from 4,000 in 1999 to 13,800 in 2006.
The largest gain in fatal overdoses from prescription painkillers came among users of morphine, while the combination of opioids and benzodiazepines such as Halcion or Xanax accounted for many of the overdoses documented in Increase in Fatal Poisonings Involving Opioid Analgesics in the United States, 1999-2006. This study comes close on the heels of calls for stronger warnings and possible bans on combination analgesics that contain either propoxyphene or acetaminophen.
Study co-author Margaret Warner told the Associated Press, "People see a car accident as something that might happen to them. Maybe they see (a painkiller overdose) as something that's not going happen to them."
On aggregate, a white man between the ages of 35 and 54 years of age had the highest risk of dying from a drug overdose during the study period.
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