Drug overdose deaths spike among middle-aged women

Overdose deaths in the U.S. are rising fastest among middle-aged women, and their drug of choice is usually prescription painkillers, the government reported Tuesday. "Mothers, wives, sisters and daughters are dying at rates that we have never seen before," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which compiled the data.

The problem is one of the few health issues the CDC is working on that are clearly getting worse, he added. For many decades, the overwhelming majority of U.S. overdose deaths were men killed by heroin or cocaine. But by 2010, 40 percent were women - most of them middle-aged women who took prescription painkillers.

Skyrocketing female overdose death rates are closely tied to a boom in the overall use of prescribed painkillers. The new report is the CDC's first to spotlight how the death trend has been more dramatic among women.

The CDC found that the number and rate of prescription painkiller overdose deaths among females increased about fivefold 1999 to 2010. Among men, such deaths rose about 3 1/2 times. Read more >>

Americans Consume EIGHTY Percent of the World's Pain Pills

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. One of the people lured into crime by drug dependency was Rich Elassar, 36, who once owned a successful business in New Jersey. More...