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New York State will launch a key component to stop one of the few causes of death that is rising rapidly in America: I-STOP, the Internet System for Tracking Over Prescribing. New York State will require doctors to consult a patient's medical history before prescribing most painkillers, or "opioids," as they're also known. These include Vicodin®, OxyContin® and methadone.
This is an important step forward in the fight against the epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse and addiction sweeping the nation.
Nationally, the quantity of prescription painkillers sold to pharmacies, hospitals and doctors' offices was four times higher in 2010 than in 1999. In fact, enough prescription painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for one month.
In the U.S., prescription painkiller overdoses killed four times as many people in 2010 as in 1999. A stunning and sobering number: more than 125,000 Americans have died lost in the past 10 years from legal painkillers.
In fact, deaths from prescription painkillers are now more than twice as common as those attributed to heroin and cocaine combined.
A big part of the prescription drug overdose problem is nonmedical use of prescription painkillers. Most people using such drugs nonmedically get them from people they know, who originally got them from doctors.
