Posted on 05/10/2012 9:49:03 PM PDT by iowamark
Americans consume 80 percent of the world's supply of painkillers -- more than 110 tons of pure, addictive opiates every year -- as the country's prescription drug abuse epidemic explodes.
That's enough drugs to give every single American 64 Percocets or Vicodin. And pain pill prescriptions continue to surge, up 600 percent in ten year, thanks to doctors who are more and more willing to hand out drugs to patients who are suffering.
As more people get their hands on these potentially-dangerous drugs, more are taking them to get high. Their drug abuse leads to 14,800 deaths a year -- more than from heroin and cocaine combined.
'We've become a society of wusses,' Long Island, New York, pharmacist Howard Levine told the BBC.
Mr Levine stopped carrying all of the major addictive prescription drugs after he was robbed twice by addicts looking to get high.
Nationwide, police are reporting increases in robberies and other crimes by people who are addicted to oxycodone and hydrocodone, the key ingredient in most prescription pain pills...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
This would explain the 2008 election cycle.
just so all you free druggers/libertarians rememeber:...the biggest problem with drug addled people is from prescription drugs...its absolutely epidemic....
so we could have all the legal drugs in the world.....we'll still have millions willing to rob,assualt,steal etc just to get another percocet/oxycontin...
..they never can have enough....so they resort to crime...
The article reads as though suffering through pain is a good thing.
War on painrelievers.
Well, it all depends on what they consider pain pills, In November, I had a 4-way bypass, open heart surgery, and the only thing I had for pain was Tylanol. And beleive me, I’m a big chicken when it comes to pain.
Oh America is suffering through pain alright.
I try not to be a pill popper of any kind. I’ve never taken the bc pill, anti-depressants, etc. I have to have a pretty good headache coming on to take an aspirin, Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, etc. I’m amazed at how many pills my parents take especially my dad. I think they’ve prescribed everything to him that a geriatric person could take. They are of the generation/mindset that if a doctor says you should take it, then you do.
That’s because we have the world’s biggest pain in the @ss for POTUS.
Anybody who thinks that way needs to experience a kidney stone. Thank God for painkillers.
I'd be curious to see a source for this assertion.
These pain killers are too dangerous. The regular population can use aspirin. Doctors will be permitted to prescribe pain killers to those in government or those who have graduated from Harvard.
A hundred tons? Not even close to the amount of coke and crack consumed in the U.S. each year. America the zonked.
I hear ya brother!
I bet NY RPh Howard Levine never had a migraine that kicked him in the head with pain so severe that it made him vomit repeatedly and then pass out from the pain ... on a regular basis.
I don’t get it.
Obama said don’t do surgery...just take the pain pill. Didn’t he?
Has he changed his mind? /s
But only if those graduates' great+ grandfather dragged a Cherokee out of his humble abode.
Bad move. I have no problem telling my doctor no. It bugs the hell out of him but too bad. He can take his statins and put them where the sun don't shine.
Kathleen Sebelius and “take a pain pill” Barry probably.
Since the rich are too greedy, Granny can now just suffer, instead of having those pain pills she needs since she couldn’t get that operation.
It all Bush and rich peoples fault that he has to hurt us like this. It’s for our own good, ya know.
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