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, the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet and Percodan. Some places saw sales increase sixteenfold.
Meanwhile, the distribution of hydrocodone, the key ingredient in Vicodin, Norco and Lortab, 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. Opioid pain relievers, the category that includes oxycodone and hydrocodone, caused 14,800 overdose deaths in 2008 alone, and the death toll is rising, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
Nice of you to join us! It is an EPIDEMIC of wide proportion!!! It is the noitans worst enemy! Get rid of the Dr. That are handing them out like pez candy and just maybe #1 people will hit off their lazy ass to work and stop taking disability and welfare. (stop playing their game!) # 2 save lives, but we need caring resources for long term help! (these people can no longer function in society) It is not just the surface we are looking at. I know my niece has been handed drugs for 10 years from doctors! They know she is an addict .rotten teeth, no brain! I have friends whom families have been ruined because the resources have taken every penny. Just saying .it is a terrible, terrible disease! Please help!