Prescription Drug Addiction Rising During Recession

In what may be the worst economy since the Great Depression, Americans are reaching for a vast array of prescription drugs -- mostly painkillers and mood enhancers -- that can rapidly lead to devastating prescription drug addiction and ruined lives.

According to drug industry sales figures and drug addiction experts, the current economic recession is driving Americans to forgo expensive medications for illnesses, such as heart disease and high blood pressure, but reaching instead for the drugs of choice for first-time abusers -- prescription narcotic painkillers and psych drugs offering escape from the reality of the lost jobs, mortgage foreclosures and dwindling hopes for ‘the good life.’

Drug Enforcement Administration officials told Congress earlier this year that prescription drug addiction and abuse is rising at “an alarming rate.” More than 7 million Americans abuse prescription drugs, according to the DEA, an 80 percent increase in just the past six years.

The trend towards abuse of prescription drugs has been a bonanza for several major Big Pharma players. Most states are reporting massive increases in shipments into their regions of painkillers like hydrocodone, oxycodone and methadone, the narcotics that lead the nation in prescription drug addiction and abuse, along with record-high drug injuries and deaths.

However, the increases in shipments don’t tally with the numbers of legitimate prescriptions being written by doctors -- a factor that worries drug addiction and law enforcement officials -- but apparently is of no concern to Big Pharma, which has not slowed its shipments.

“Without a doubt, there is an increase in use of scheduled drugs in Kansas,” said Jeff Brandau, a special agent at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. “Either Kansans are in a lot of pain,” he told the Kansas City Star, “or something else is going on.” That “something else” might be the recession acting as driving the rise in prescription drug addiction and abuse.

Federal figures showed shipments into Kansas of hydrocodone -- the active ingredient in Vicodin -- jumped by more than 300 percent since 2000, much of that just in the last year. Oxycodone, another commonly abused synthetic opioid and the active narcotic in OxyContin, was up more than 260 percent. OxyContin, probably the most notorious narcotic ‘people-killer’ of all prescription drugs, may actually be surpassed by methadone, the much-cheaper, highly-addictive narcotic painkiller used as a ‘treatment’ for heroin addiction. Methadone, believed to carry the dubious distinction of more prescription drug addiction victims around the world than all other prescription drugs, has also very likely killed more people than any other prescription drug.

Many of the drugs are diverted illegally via shady Internet pharmacies, or obtained by victims of prescription drug addiction by ‘doctor-shopping’ for prescriptions, as well as using forged prescriptions. The recession, and regional shortages of cocaine and meth, are both factors fueling the higher abuse rates, he added.

Michael Boeger, an official at the Missouri Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, said similar numbers in Missouri “blow us off the charts.” It’s hard to get a grip on the level of abuse in Missouri because two large, legitimate mail-order pharmacies naturally inflate the numbers by importing and re-exporting the drugs. However, Missouri is also part of a national Internet-based supply system for illegal prescriptions, he added. Crooked Internet pharmacies are prime drug sources for victims of prescription drug addiction.

Efforts to deal with the abuse appear stalled in both Kansas and Missouri, partly due to the recession that’s fueling the drug problem. Neither state has passed proposed legislation to fund Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs, electronic databases that track prescriptions, helping doctors and pharmacists prevent doctor-shopping by victims of prescription drug addiction and abuse.

Iowa is the most recent of the nearly 40 states that have instituted the programs. But since the Kansas Legislature passed a law implementing the program recently, it remains unfunded by a current budget shortfall. In Missouri, a federal grant helped study the program, but the legislature failed to pass it due to funding problems and privacy concerns.

Meanwhile, as elected officials slug it out with each other over budgets, and law enforcement continues to struggle with prevention, victims of prescription drug addiction who want to regain their lives are turning to medical drug detox, the only treatment option offering safe and effective withdrawal from prescription and illicit drugs, and the ever-popular “recession-proof” drug, alcohol.