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Sales of two most popular prescription painkillers soar amid rise in overdose deaths
Sales of the America’s two most popular prescription painkillers have soared in new parts of the country amid fears of an overdose epidemic.
Oxycodone and hydrocodone were found to be responsible for 14,800 overdose deaths in America in 2008, a figure the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention says is rising.
Oxycodone is the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet and Percodan, while hydrocodone is found in Vicodin, Norco and Lortab.
Nationwide, pharmacies dispensed the equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone in 2010 — enough to give 40 Percocets and 24 Vicodins to every person in the United States.
Epidemic: Nationwide, pharmacies received and ultimately dispensed the equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone in 2010
From New York’s Staten Island to Santa Fe, N.M., Drug Enforcement Administration figures show dramatic rises between 2000 and 2010 in the distribution of oxycodone.Some places saw sales increase sixteenfold.
Meanwhile, the distribution of hydrocodone is rising in Appalachia, the original epicenter of the painkiller epidemic, as well as in the Midwest.
The increases have coincided with a wave of overdose deaths, pharmacy robberies and other problems in New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Florida and other states.
The DEA data records shipments from distributors to pharmacies, hospitals, practitioners and teaching institutions.The drugs are eventually dispensed and sold to patients, but the DEA does not keep track of how much individual patients receive.
Abuse: Some abusers swallow the pills; others crush them, then smoke, snort (pictured) or inject the powder
The increase is partly due to the aging U.S.population with pain issues and a greater willingness by doctors to treat pain, said Gregory Bunt, medical director at New York’s Daytop Village chain of drug treatment clinics.
Sales are also being driven by addiction, as users become physically dependent on painkillers and begin ‘doctor shopping’ to keep the prescriptions coming, he said.
‘Prescription medications can provide enormous health and quality-of-life benefits to patients,’ Gil Kerlikowske, the U.S.drug czar, told Congress in March. ‘However, we all now recognize that these drugs can be just as dangerous and deadly as illicit substances when misused or abused.’
Opioids like hydrocodone and oxycodone can release intense feelings of well-being.Some abusers swallow the pills; others crush them, then smoke, snort or inject the powder.
Unlike most street drugs, the problem has its roots in two disparate parts of the country — Appalachia and affluent suburbs, said Pete Jackson, president of Advocates for the Reform of Prescription Opioids.
‘Now it’s spreading from those two poles,’ Jackson said.
Research by the Associated Press revealed that a few postal codes that include military bases or Veterans Affairs hospitals have seen large increases in painkiller use because of soldier patients injured in the Middle East, law enforcement officials say.
In addition, small areas around St. Louis, Indianapolis, Las Vegas and Newark, N.J., have seen their totals affected because mail-order pharmacies have shipping centers there, said Carmen Catizone, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.
New York’s Long Island has also seen huge increases.In Islip, N.Y., teenager Makenzie Emerson says she started stealing oxycodone that her mother was prescribed in 2009 after a fall on ice. Soon Emerson was popping six pills at a time.
‘When I would go over to friends’ houses I would raid their medicine cabinets because I knew their parents were most likely taking something,’ said Emerson, now 19.
One day she overdosed at the mall.Her mother, Phyllis Ferraro, tried to keep her daughter breathing until the ambulance arrived.
‘The pills are everywhere,’ Ferraro said. ‘There aren’t enough treatment centers and yet there’s a pharmacy on every corner.’