PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: A TROUBLING TWIST

These days, drugs that are bought on the streets aren't sending
people to the emergency room as much as those that are bought from
behind the counter.

So says new data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration's Drug Abuse Warning Network, or DAWN. It found that,
for the third year in a row, more people who had abused prescription
drugs wound up in emergency rooms than people who had abused illicit drugs.

In 2009, around 1.2 million visits to emergency rooms involved people
who had misused pharmaceutical drugs. In 2008, such visits numbered
around 1.1 million and in 2007, around 985,316.

By contrast, emergency room visits by people who had overdosed on
illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin were around 974,000 in 2009,
according to DAWN. It has remained at fewer than a million since 2004.

There's more: The 1.2 million hospital emergency room visits from
people who had misused or overdosed on pharmaceutical drugs represent
a 98 percent increase since 2004, when 627,000 visits involved
pharmaceutical drug abuse.

The jump in emergency room visits from people abusing prescription
drugs is alarming. It shows that more people are becoming dependent
on painkillers and other prescription drugs, and it also shows that
some, particularly youths, are finding ways to get high without
putting themselves in danger of being busted for buying marijuana or
cocaine openly, or by taking a chance that the police may be
watching. But whether people abuse prescription drugs or illegal
drugs, they still expose themselves to injury and death.

No matter if they buy it off a street corner or from the corner drugstore.

SIDEBAR: Fast Facts

The government is taking several steps to combat prescription drug
abuse. They are:

- - Increasing prescription drug return, take-back and disposal
programs across the nation.

- - Expanding state-based prescription drug monitoring programs.

- - Educating prescribers about how to instruct patients on using and
properly disposing of painkillers, to observe signs of dependence and
to detect people who are "doctor shopping" for prescriptions.

- - Assisting states on cracking down on doctor shopping and "pill mills."

Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,
Drug Abuse Warning Network.