Legally prescribed drugs the biggest killer

By Libby

You often hear from the prohibitionist profiteers that drug overdoses from illegal drugs are such a huge problem, they justify pouring 40+ billion a year into the black hole of the war on some drugs. If you look at the numbers, that argument doesn't really hold. Sure, with no other context, this sounds alarming.

According to a little noticed January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available. That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43,667) and ahead of firearms deaths (30,694).

What's more disturbing is that the 2005 figures are only the latest in such a seemingly inexorable increase in overdose deaths that the eras of the 1970s heroin epidemic and the 1980s crack wave pale in comparison. According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60%.

The rise can be largely attributed to the abuse of illegally diverted prescription drugs but this 2002 report that just surfaced in my inbox points to a bigger villian in drug deaths.

According to a recent study, an estimated 2 million people were hospitalized in one year alone for reactions to properly prescribed medications and 100,000 of these people died, making unexpected adverse reactions to drugs a leading cause of death in the United States.

In other words these legal drugs were prescribed under routine good medical practices but killed three times as many people as illegal drugs because of the adverse side effects of pharmaceutical poisons. Meanwhile, it's useful to remember that there has never been a recorded death due to a marijuana overdose in the history of mankind. Kind of puts the drug war into a different perspective, doesn't it?

Comments

[subadei]

I'd opine that American's are generally over medicated. The irony of legal, prescribed drugs killing more people than illicit drugs will surely whistle right through the skulls of drug war proponents.

Off topic comment to follow:

Nice new digs. I especially liked the McCain for Prez. ad...

[Libby]

You're right Subadei, it won't register with the drug war warriors and LOL, I was pretty taken with the McCain ad myself. I was wondering if I was posting to the right blog for a moment....