Did you know what the Surgeon General of the U.S., Dr. Regina Benjamin, called "the nation's fastest growing problem" at a conference this month? Hint: It's not cancer, homelessness, or unemployment. It's prescription drug abuse. Yes, the legal medications the doctor gives you are now being abused in what Dr. Ileana Arias of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes as epidemic proportions. She added that the CDC doesn't use the term "epidemic" lightly either. At the same inaugural National Rx Drug Abuse Summit held on April 12, 2012 in Orlando, FL both women spoke to a crowd of about 700 to address the increasingly growing problem.
Dr. Arias told the group that "in 2010, enough prescription painkillers were prescribed to medicate every American adult around the clock for a month." The number of deaths caused by non-medical abuse of prescription drugs is now 15,000 annually at a cost of $72.5 billion in health care costs.
Prescription painkillers have gone from 76 million prescriptions in 1991 to 219 million in 2011. Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Heath Ledger are just a few of the celebrity deaths who have brought attention to this problem into the living rooms of Americans who were unaware of it.
Research shows that the prescription drugs abused are gotten from family and friend in over 70 percent of the cases. Here's what you can do to make sure your medications don't get into the wrong hands. Tomorrow, April 28, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) with the Department of Justice are holding the 4th annual National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day between 10:00 and 2:00 p.m. No questions will be asked and there is no reason to fear arrest.
Clean out your medicine chest and put all the expired drugs, extra drugs you didn't need, and any drugs you are not currently taking or expecting to need soon in a bag and drop them off at your local drop-off center for safe disposal. Do not flush them down the toilet, put them down the sink, or throw them away because they will pollute our water supply and landfills with poison. To find out where you can take them in your area go to this Web site and enter your Zip Code or County, City and State:
There. No worries any longer about the babysitter or cleaning crew or your kids helping themselves to that leftover Vicodin the dentist gave you. But it's not just painkillers that are abused. Over-the-counter diet pills, prescription stimulants, and psychiatric drugs like tranquilizers, sedatives, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotics are among drugs being abused. You may not think your meds are the type that would appeal to drug abusers, but then you thought bath salts and hand hand sanitizers were only for their primary use and they are now being abused as well.
