While driving home with a good friend this weekend from Denver, (it’s a four hour drive through beautiful mountain country), an interesting statement was made that prescription drugs probably kill more people than illicit drugs. It’s not a bad assumption at all, and with easily trackable stats already recorded it wouldn’t be hard to prove or disprove. So, when a story citing a coroner’s report in Florida regarding prescription drugs fell in my lap this afternoon, it couldn’t count as more than anything but an amusing coincidence. To the News Story and Report we go:
Thank you NY Times writer Damien Cave:
… The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants…
…An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined…
The story also claims drug related deaths are tracked more “responsibly” in Florida, stating other states are not as active in tracking those stats. It seems to me, drug related deaths should be one of the most important numbers to individual states, and the federal government in the War on Certain Drugs.
Proving once again the all mighty dollar is more important than the people’s voice, and apparently your life.