Painkiller Sales Up Ninety Percent
And pot is illegal... Americans are buying 90 percent more painkillers containing codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine than they did in 1997, according to data from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The Associated Press reported Aug. 20 that each year Americans buy 200,000 pounds of these drugs -- enough to give 300 mg of painkillers to every person in the country. Most of the reported increase came from sales of oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin. Some of the drugs are diverted for illicit use. But the trend also is due to an aging population, changes in pain-management philosophy among doctors, and a massive marketing campaign by drug companies. Much of the increase occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, DEA crackdowns have led some doctors to shy away from prescribing powerful painkillers, and sales have increased only about 2 percent annually over the past four years.
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