http://www.liveinthenow.com/article/guess-what-kills-one-person-every-19-minutes
Guess What Kills One Person Every 19 Minutes?
Posted by Joshua Corn
Drugs Kill When it comes “how you’re going to die,” many people fear things like airplane crashes or shark attacks, even though statistics show that deaths from these events are very rare. Conversely, far too many people mistakenly believe that certain common aspects of everyday life are extremely safe — when, in reality, this is often far from the truth.
Once such daily ritual that is far more dangerous than many people believe is taking properly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs. Popping pills on a daily basis to “improve health” has become far too common for many Americans. In fact, according to the CDC, approximately 50% of all Americans take a pharmaceutical drug daily. When you isolate senior citizens, the number shoots up to an astonishing 90%. And perhaps even more troubling, 20% of children take a pharmaceutical drug.
At the same time, statistics are showing that deaths from pharmaceutical drugs are rising at an alarming rate. But don’t take my word for it. Just google the term “pharmaceutical drugs kill” and you’ll see headlines from major news organizations such as Fox and CNN that read:
“Prescription drugs 62,000 times more likely to kill …
“Prescription drugs kill 6200% more Americans …”
“Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans than Illegal Drugs…”
“Prescription drugs are now killing more people than traffic accidents…”
“Prescription Drug Deaths Skyrocket…”
“Prescription drugs kill one person every 19 minutes…”
“Prescription Drugs Now Kill More People Than Heroin And Cocaine Combined…”
Sadly, most people don’t know that properly prescribed prescription drugs kill over 100,000 Americans each year. (This excludes prescription drug abuse, which causes this number to skyrocket even higher.) This is more than or equal to the number of people who die from accidents, Alzheimer’s, influenza and diabetes!
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CHMI Works with Partners to Address the Prevalence of Prescription Drug Misuse
Posted on May 06, 2013 by Clinton Foundation | Tags: Clinton Health Matters Initiative, CHMI, Prescription Drug Abuse and Misuse Strategy, NYPD, NYU
Today, President Clinton joined NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, New York University President John Sexton, and National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Dr. Nora Volkow for a panel discussion moderated by Wall Street Journal’s health reporter Melinda Beck on prescription drug abuse. Throughout the discussion, panelists brought to light the number of individuals affected by prescription drug misuse each year and how the issue is the nation’s fastest growing drug problem. In the United States, one person dies every 19 minutes from a drug overdose, a tragedy driven largely by the misuse of prescription painkillers. And, in the last 20 years, the consumption of prescription stimulants increased from 5 million to 45 million.
Throughout the discussion, each panelist highlighted how they are working to address this issue and discussed the many reasons for why prescription drug misuse and abuse is widespread, while also bringing attention to multi-pronged solutions for the issue. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly highlighted how through their Clinton Health Matters Initiative pledge to action, the NYPD will address the problem of drug abuse from the position of enforcement, deterrence, and education. Commissioner Kelly announced that the NYPD will begin reaching out to all colleges and universities across New York City to work with them to increase awareness about prescription drug abuse during freshman orientation. New York University (NYU) President John Sexton highlighted that more than 7 percent of college students across the country in 2012 reported misuse of pain medication, and discussed NYU’s commitment to student health and wellness through the university’s Wellness Exchange program. The program provides a service 7 days a week, 24 hours a day for students to receive advice and support on a range of issues – whether they have anxiety over exams to problems with prescription drugs to thoughts of suicide. Additionally, Dr. Volkow discussed how it is often the lack of knowledge about how prescription drugs – especially when mixed with other drugs from stimulants to depressants – is what jeopardizes people.
During the panel, President Clinton discussed how the Clinton Health Matters Initiative (CHMI) will work to address the prevalence of prescription drug misuse on university and college campuses as well as emphasize how to reduce the prevalence of this issue in other environments such as demanding workplace settings. President Clinton noted that in just this decade alone, we have the potential to save 10,000 lives.
Over the next 5 years, the Clinton Foundation will work with partners including the NYPD to implement a number of initiatives designed to address the growing health and safety problem of prescription drug abuse. CHMI will also work to help universities foster safer, healthier environments by asking universities across the country to invest in best practices against the abuse and misuse of prescription drugs. CHMI will aim to cut in half the number of young people from 18 to 26-years-old misusing prescription drugs for the first time. Specifically, CHMI will recruit colleges and universities to join a Prescription Safe Campus Initiative (PSCI). Through PSCI, CHMI will build the capacity of student and campus leaders to implement best practice strategies to reduce prescription drug misuse and abuse in areas such as residence halls, campus health centers, campus security and police, employee wellness, student orientation, and athletics programs. Specific strategies will include prevention education programming, student-led awareness campaigns and increased substance abuse and mental health services on participating campuses.
In addition to working with colleges and universities, CHMI will build strategic partnerships with the corporate, non-governmental, philanthropic, and public sectors to address the following priority challenges to ending prescription drug misuse and abuse:
- Engage businesses that host physically demanding professions, such as energy, health care, the military, and transportation to integrate prescription drug abuse prevention and treatment support into workplace wellness efforts.
- Work with the pharmaceutical industry and others to improve supply and affordability of Naloxone/narcan, a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose.
- Engage medical associations, physician groups, retail pharmacy chains and others to expand the reach and improve the effectiveness of prescription drug monitoring programs that help detect and prevent the diversion and abuse of prescription drugs.
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Contact Urban Outfitters to Stop Selling Products that Promote Prescription Drug Abuse
Urban Outfitters, the national retail store popular with teens, is currently selling pint glasses, flasks and shot glasses made to look like prescription pill bottles. These products make light of prescription drug misuse and abuse, a dangerous behavior that is responsible for more deaths in the United States each year than heroin and cocaine combined. Medicine abuse has increased 33 percent over the past five years with one in four teens having misused or abused a prescription drug in their lifetime. Combined with alcohol, the misuse and abuse of prescription medications can be especially dangerous, making the Urban Outfitter Rx pint and shot glasses and flasks even more disturbing.
As recent research from The Partnership at Drugfree.org shows, teens and parents alike do not understand the health risks associated with the misuse and abuse of prescription drugs. In fact, more than a quarter of teens mistakenly believe that misusing and abusing prescription drugs is safer than using street drugs.
Tongue-in-cheek products that normalize and promote prescription drug abuse only serve to reinforce the misperception about the dangers associated with abusing medicine and put more teens at risk.
Ask Urban Outfitters to remove these products from their stores and website immediately.
Feel free to use the information above to help make your point.
CONTACT INFO FOR Urban Outfitters:
Send an e-mail to:
Richard A. Hayne; CEO & Chairman
richard.hayne@urbanout.com
Write a letter:
Urban Outfitters, Inc.
5000 South Broad St
Philadelphia, PA 19112-1495
Sign the Facebook Causes petition by clicking here.
When you take action, reply to this e-mail to let us know – and please forward this message to a friend or colleague.
Join us and make your voice heard!
The Partnership at Drugfree.org
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This was written by a friend Frank Greenagel Jr. via facebook
Another article on the opiate epidemic and the problems with insurance companies that make it difficult for their customers to get treatment. I’ve been beating the drum on this issue in newspapers, online and on the radio for over a year now.
The passage of the Good Samaritan law was a major victory. That said, we still have a high rate of overdose deaths, continued difficulty with getting insurance to pay for treatment and still FAR too many people getting their hands on prescription painkillers.
We need a lot of help. I’d like to see a recovery high school in New Jersey. We need a forward thinking superintendent to take a chance on creating an alternative school (it’s foolish to send a kid to rehab and then have them return to the very school where they were abusing drugs and/or booze). We need more Recovery College programs (even though it is an incredibly successful niche for Rutgers and myself, I desperately want to see more in NJ and throughout the USA). We need to drug test those that are getting prescription painkillers (to see if they are on other drugs, and more importantly, to see if they are actually taking the drugs they are prescribed (and not selling them) –>that’s an idea from 2 leading insurance companies, not mine). We need more training on this issue for tweens, teens, parents, teachers and clinicians. We need to expand the prescription drug monitoring program (which is already incredibly successful). We need more treatment options. Each dollar spent now saves between four and seven dollars down the road (criminal justice, healthcare, diminished work capacity, etc…).
Please spread the word. Educate one other person. If you are supremely motivated, call your state legislator and pass on whatever suggestions I made above to them. Change can happen from the ground up.
(mic drop)
http://www.mycentraljersey.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013305050025
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Linebacker Austin Box of the Oklahoma Sooners takes a break during a game in 2010. Box died of an accidental prescription drug overdose the following year.
Austin Box “gutted through” pain. Even after a bad blow to his back that ruptured a disc, the linebacker for the University of Oklahoma Sooners played through the pain that lingered after rehab.
He was upbeat, alert and seemingly at the top of his physical game on a three-day trip to St. Louis with his father in 2011. But the day after they returned, Austin was found unconscious in a friend’s home. He died after being taken to the hospital, at age 22.
The toxicology report showed five different pain medications and an anti-anxiety drug in Austin’s system — a cocktail that ended up stopping his heart.
In the months that followed, Craig Box, Austin’s father, couldn’t help thinking back over their trip to St. Louis for signs of an addiction. “I saw nothing that gave me any indication that this was an issue,” he said — no sign that his “all-American” son was about to become part of an increasingly American statistic.
Overdose deaths from prescription painkillers have quadrupled nationwide in recent years, rising from 4,030 deaths in 1999 to 16,651 in 2010. According to Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 125,000 lives were lost in the last 10 years to legal drugs like Vicodin, OxyContin and methadone.
In fact, deaths from prescription painkillers, or “opioids,” as they’re also known, now outpaces those attributed to heroin and cocaine combined.
But the problem runs deeper still. For every overdose death from prescription painkillers, the CDC estimates there are:
- 10 treatment admissions for abuse
- 32 emergency department visits for misuse or abuse
- 130 people who abuse or are dependent
- 825 people who take prescription painkillers for non-medical use
How did America’s drug problem shift from the streets to the medicine cabinet so quickly?
On Tuesday’s PBS NewsHour broadcast, health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser travels to Oklahoma — the No. 1 state for prescription painkiller abuse — to talk with the Box family about how Austin may have become hooked on prescription drugs and how he was able to hide the addiction from his family. She also sits down with the CDC’s Frieden to hear more about the scope of the problem nationwide and what might be done about it.
In the meantime, the CDC has compiled a list of 10 things you should know about prescription drug abuse. Questions? Leave them in the comments section below, and a CDC official will try to answer them on the NewsHour’s website in the days ahead.
Top 10 You Should Know About Prescription Drug Abuse, According to the CDC
1. Drug overdoses now kill more Americans than motor vehicle crashes.
Drug overdoses killed more than 38,000 people in 2010; about 105 deaths per day. Of these deaths, prescription painkiller overdoses killed 16,500 people; about 45 deaths per day. “Prescription painkillers” refers to opioid or narcotic pain relievers, such as Vicodin (hydrocodone), OxyContin (oxycodone), Opana (oxymorphone), and methadone.
2. Enough painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate each American adult every four hours for one month.
The amount of painkillers being prescribed is growing significantly. In fact, the quantity of prescription painkillers sold to pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors offices was four times higher in 2010 than in 1999.
3. Deaths from prescription painkillers have reached epidemic levels in the past decade.
The number of prescription painkiller overdose deaths is now greater than the number of deaths from heroin and cocaine combined. And the number of deaths from prescription painkillers is growing fast. The number of deaths from prescription painkillers increased from 4,030 deaths in 1999 to 16,651 deaths in 2010. This means that prescription painkiller overdoses killed four times as many people in 2010 than in 1999.
4. Roughly one in 20 people in the US reported using prescription painkillers for non-medical reasons in the past year.
A big part of the prescription drug overdose problem is non-medical use of prescription painkillers — using drugs without a prescription, or using drugs just for the “high.” Most people using drugs without a prescription obtain them from people they know, who originally got them from doctors.
5. You can help prevent prescription drug overdoses.
Steps you can take include the following: – Use prescription painkillers only as directed by a health care provider.
– Store prescriptions drugs in a secure place and dispose of them properly.
– Do not sell or share prescription painkillers with others. – For people who think they have a prescription drug abuse problem, please contact 1-800-662-HELP to find treatment resources.
6. The prescription drug overdose epidemic can be stopped through effective public health interventions.
In addition to the things you can do at home to keep yourself and your family safe, there are also community and state-wide strategies that help prevent prescription painkiller overdoses. These include programs and policies used by health care providers, insurers, and states. Learn more about public health interventions.
7. States can start or improve prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) and use Patient Review and Restriction (PRR) programs.
These programs can help stop this epidemic, improve the coordination of care for patients, and ensure appropriate care for high-risk patients. Find out more about PDMPS and PRR program.
8. States can enforce policies aimed at reducing drug diversion, abuse, and overdose.
States can pass, enforce and evaluate pill mill, doctor shopping and other laws to reduce prescription painkiller abuse. Learn more about which state policies show promise in reducing prescription drug abuse and overdose.
9. States and communities can enhance access to substance abuse treatment.
Effective, accessible substance abuse treatment can reduce overdoses among people struggling with dependence and addiction. Learn more about substance abuse treatment.
10. Health care providers should use evidence-based clinical guidelines and practices to promote safe and effective use of prescription painkillers.
The following guidelines can help:
- Screening and monitoring for substance abuse and mental health problems.
- Prescribing prescription painkillers only when other treatments have not been effective for pain.
- Prescribing only the quantity of prescription painkillers needed based on the expected length of pain.
- Using patient-provider agreements combined with urine drug tests for people using prescription painkillers long term.
- Talking with patients about safely using, storing and disposing of prescription painkillers.
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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/04/prescription-drug-abuse-top-10-things-cdc-says-you-should-know.html
10 things the CDC says you should know about prescription drugs. This is a great article filled with so much information.
Get the facts and store them in your box!
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