As noted in the pre­vi­ous post the drug abuse and drug mor­bid­ity surge that we expe­ri­ence is not with the tra­di­tional ille­gal drugs, like heroin and cocaine, but with pre­scrip­tion drugs.

By far, the drug cat­e­gory that out­paces all oth­ers in terms of vol­ume of peo­ple end­ing up in emer­gency depart­ments (see the slides below) or dead (the topic of later posts) are legally pre­scribed opi­oid drugs.  Exam­ples of these drugs are oxy­codone, Oxy­Con­tin, hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco), and codeine.

As you will see below, the num­ber of emer­gency depart­ment vis­its related to legal opi­oids since 2004 has almost tripled.  In just five years.

Also notice that emer­gency depart­ment vis­its related to heroin are sta­ble for the same period.

legal vs ille­gal opi­oids, national

Den­ver shows by and large a steeper growth rate (more than 300% growth in five years) but with a lev­el­ing of the data from 2008 — 2009.

All data is from the DAWN (Drug Abuse Warn­ing Net­work) at https://dawninfo.samhsa.gov/ and are lifted from my pre­sen­ta­tion, “Pre­scrip­tion Drug Abuse:  The Hid­den Epidemic”