Pain Killer Abuse Epidemic Sweeping US

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When a typical American imagines a drug-abusing culture, they picture young street people ruining their lives by shooting heroin or cocaine. But the face of drug abuse across America is changing. The new drug epidemic doesn’t involve teenagers using street drugs. It involves their parents abusing prescription medications.

The orphan-making epidemic is particularly acute in areas such as Rockcastle County, Kentucky, where authorities are reporting one drug related death per week. Tragic cases abound such as 16-year old Avery Bradshaw who lost his father to a drug overdose on Oxycontin and 17-year old Sean Watkins who lost his mother at the age of ten to the same drug. Bradshaw and Watkins are not isolated cases. According to the 2010 census, over 86,000 children in Kentucky are currently being raised by someone other than a biological parent. Read their stories and others here: Prescription drugs ‘orphan’ children in eastern Kentucky.

Bradshaw and Watkins are more fortunate than other children impacted by this tragedy, however, as they both are living in stable homes with their grandparents. Other children who have been made orphans by prescription-drug abuse are being shuffled from house to house in sometimes dangerous and unstable living situations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared the problem to be an epidemic with someone dying of a prescription drug-related overdose every 19-minutes across the US.

In addition to Kentucky, states most impacted include Washington, Utah, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada and New Mexico. The epidemic is so difficult to stop because the drug of choice and the users keep changing. Organizations such as UNITE lobby to fight each narcotic villain. Founded by US Representative Hal Rogers in 2003, UNITE’s initial efforts were focused on getting pushers to quit selling drugs to children. But, just as UNITE began to make headway on this front, the face of drug-abuse changed necessitating a new war. UNITE has adapted to the change and now focuses its efforts on educating and counseling children orphaned by this tragedy.

It’s difficult to focus on one drug as the drug of choice keeps changing. Street drugs such as heroin and cocaine were replaced by powerful prescription narcotics, such as vicodin. When vicodin became harder to find, addicts switched to oxcontin, a powerful and addictive narcotic-pain killer whose effects are amplified by crushing the pills and snorting or injecting them and/or combining medication use with alcohol. Oxycontin’s manufacturer responded in 2010 by reformulating their drug so it was almost impossible to crush.

The drug of choice then became opana, whose main ingredient is oxymorphine. In 2010 in Kentucky, toxicology reports found oxymorphine in only 2% of all drug-related deaths. By 2011, the prevalence has skyrocketed to 23%. Although this drug’s manufacturers have also reformulated a non-crushable version of their medication, this formulation will not be released until 2013. Upon its release, drug czars are expecting another medication to quickly take its place.

Tough economic times may be attributing to the shift in demographic use patterns from children to their parents, especially in impoverished rural areas such as the Appalachians. In fact, one major source of the drugs is senior citizens, who are selling them to pushers to supplement their social security incomes. One thing is sadly sure, regardless of age or demographic, the war on drugs is far from over.