Over 16 million Americans – a shocking 6.4 per cent of the population – regularly abuse prescription drugs, a UN survey has found.
According to the UN report, the abuse of prescription drugs is the fastest-growing drug related problem in the country – with the number of addicts far outstripping those who use cocaine.
The annual UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) report found that the ‘non-medical’ use of pain relievers, tranquillizers, stimulants and sedatives had risen from 15.2 million in 2008 to 16 million in 2009.
It was also revealed that among those who received opium based pain relief, the number who were subsequently treated for the abuse of pain relievers more than tripled from 1998 to 2008, reaching 26.5 per cent, the report found.
And between 2007 to 2009, the percentage of state and local law enforcement agencies reporting prescription drugs as the greatest drug-related threat to their areas more than doubled.
At the same time the number of Americans who use cocaine fell from 5.3 million in 2008 to 4.8 million in 2009.
The fall was attributed to a number of factors including, crucially, less cocaine abuse, decreased illicit cocaine manufacture in Colombia and sustained pressure on drug trafficking organisations in Mexico.
The INCB report is an annual worldwide survey of drug production, consumption and distribution by the UN drug agency.
The shocking figures come after fears that ‘pill-mills’ – clinics that illegally or carelessly issue prescription pain killers – continue to feed addiction in the U.S.
Only last month, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said the illegal abuse of prescription drugs is Florida’s ‘greatest public health threat.’
Painkillers
It was reported that there were 1,167 registered pain clinics in the state compared to 860 McDonald’s restaurants.
The agency added that seven people die in Florida state every day due to prescription drug abuse.
Speaking yesterday, newly appointed House Appropriations Committee chairman Hal Rogers said the Justice Department had not been doing enough to stop the flow of illegally obtained prescription drugs.
He said: ‘It’s an absolute disgrace’ with so many people involved in the illicit trade flying back and forth to Florida that ‘they call it the OxyContin Express.
‘Crook doctors operating these pill mills’ are out of control.’
OxyContin is a prescription medication used to relieve moderate to severe pain.
It is one of the main prescription drugs that users become addicted to.
Last year it was reported that U.S. prescription drug sales climbed by 5.1 percent to $300.3 billion in 2009 – dwarfing the meagre 1.5 per cent rise the year before.
The prescription drugs involved are primarily opium derived pain relievers containing codeine, fentanyl, hydromorphone, morphine, oxycodone, dextropropoxyphene, methadone or hydrocodone.
Aside from the prescription drug problem, the U.N. survey found that the United States continued to be the main country of destination for illicit drug shipments.
It said: ‘In 2009 the number of drug-related deaths increased sharply in the United States.
‘The Board is also deeply concerned about the fact that the United States recorded for 2009 an increase in the abuse of all drugs except cocaine.’
According to the results an estimated 38 million people, 15.1 per cent of the population used illicit drugs in 2009.
That represents an increase of 2.5 million people from 2008 and a reversal of the declining trend in illicit drug use in the preceding years.
Investigators added that they were concerned by the increasing number of young people using cannabis and prescription drugs containing controlled substances.
The report added it was: ‘Deeply concerned about ‘medical’ cannabis schemes, which so far have been introduced in 14 states in the United States.
‘The control measures applied in those states to the cultivation of cannabis plants and the production, distribution and use of cannabis fall short of the control requirements.’
The news comes as the Food and Drug Administration said today it will remove around 500 unapproved cold and allergy medications from the market as part of an ongoing crackdown on ineffective prescription drugs.
The FDA requires companies to submit all new prescription drugs for scientific review before they are launched.
However, thousands of drugs actually pre-date the FDA’s drug regulations and have escaped scrutiny for decades.
Most of the drugs targeted by the latest action are pills using untested combinations of decongestant and cough-suppressing ingredients.
Prescriptions for powerful drugs have soared in past 20 years, with death through overdose rising in their wake.
They are the most powerful painkillers that family doctors have at their disposal, and as the queue of patients suffering from chronic pain grows longer doctors have been handing them out in greater numbers.
A review by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse, published in June, found a six-fold increase in the prescribing of opioid analgesics by GPs from 228 million items in 1991 to 1.38bn items in 2009.
Brian Iddon, the former chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Misuse, which reported in 2009, warned that the UK faced a similar epidemic to that in North America within a decade. Des Spence, a GP in Glasgow, wrote in the BMJ that the increased prescribing of opioids for chronic pain – other than that caused by cancer – was a “disaster in the making”.
The increase is being driven by drug-company marketing that is fuelling patient demand. As populations age in the UK and across Europe, and more succumb to conditions such as arthritis, between 20 and 50 per cent are estimated to suffer from chronic pain.
Chronic pain caused by injury or disease has been poorly treated in the past and specialists acknowledge the growing use of powerful painkillers is a sign of a more compassionate society, prepared to dispense comfort to those in need. But there is a risk, as doses rise and dependence grows, that the dangers outweigh the benefits.
The review, Addiction to Medicines, by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse, found that 3,735 patients receiving treatment for addiction said their primary problem was with prescription medicines, just 2 per cent of the total in drug-treatment services.
But the authors admitted that most of those with such a problem would be likely to seek treatment from their GPs.
Dr Cathy Stannard, a consultant in pain medicine at North Bristol NHS Trust and the author of Opioids in Chronic Pain, said: “There has been a huge increase in prescribing of opioid painkillers and they are being overused. I run a pain clinic where patients are coming in on 10 times the recommended dose. They keep going back to their doctors complaining of pain and the doctors don’t know what to do – so they increase the dose.
“With other conditions, if the drug isn’t working, doctors stop it and try something else. But it doesn’t seem to be common clinical practice for doctors to say, ‘if this painkiller isn’t working we should stop it’.”
Dependence on painkillers in the UK remained a hidden problem because there was “absolutely no data”, Dr Stannard said.
The Public Health minister Anne Milton said: “Next month, we will convene a round-table meeting of experts to discuss action needed in light of new evidence from two recent Department of Health commissioned studies on addiction to prescription medicines. We will discuss how healthcare professionals can best address the issue.”