Prescription Drug Abuse, the New Public Threat in the US

Government officials knew it was bound to happen. Then, the toxicology report came in on Wednesday, February 6 from New York City. "We have concluded that the manner of death is accident, resulting from the abuse of prescription medications," said Ellen Borakove, spokesperson for the medical examiner, in a news release.

Actor Heath Ledger died on January 22 in a rented Manhattan loft after taking two sedatives, two painkillers, and two anti-anxiety drugs, self-inflicting an acute and lethal mix of prescription medication. Ledger joined a long list of celebrities that have succumbed to the effects of prescription drug abuse in the past few decades, including Nicole Smith, Truman Capote, Steve Clark, Judy Garland, and Billy Holiday. But long before his death, government authorities knew there was something terribly wrong.

Federal studies were pointing to addiction to prescription drugs as a serious problem spreading rapidly across the country. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), close to 48 million people - about 20 percent of the US population - 12 years and older, had intentionally abused prescription drugs.

Back in 2003, federal authorities had received results from a nationwide study on drug use and health that strongly suggested an alarming rise in prescription drug abuse among older adults, teenagers and women. The following year, the Institute on Drug Abuse focused their study on 8th, 10th and 12th graders, discovering that more than 9 percent of those students were using pain killers, tranquilizers, sedatives and stimulants to get high, exposing themselves to addiction to prescription drugs and possibly death.

Federal authorities interpreted these findings, especially among teens and young adults, as a serious threat to public health, saying "prescription pain killers abuse now ranks second-only behind marijuana-as the Nation's most prevalent illegal drug problem."

After identifying friends and relatives as the main source of prescribed medication for this new trend on prescription drug abuse, on February of 2007 the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, along with two other federal agencies, issued new guidelines for the proper disposal of prescription drugs to take effect immediately.

Federal authorities expect this new policy to be part of a combined effort with local state campaigns to raise public awareness on the risks of prescription drug abuse. They called on health care providers, physicians, pharmacists, and families nationwide to participate in these efforts. The goal is to reduce the number of users by 15 percent by the end of 2009, a modest and conservative goal at best.

NIDA says that with 50 million Americans suffering from chronic pain, the potential for addiction or fatal abuse of prescription medication is still high, as Heath Ledger just proved.