The Obama administration has announced a strategy aimed at cracking down on painkiller abuse. As Reuters reports, the plan responds to a growing menace: between 2002 and 2009, the number of prescription drug abusers above the age of 12 jumped by 20 percent.
“Unintentional drug overdose is a growing epidemic in the U.S. and is now the leading cause of injury death in 17 states,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a news release. The agency has called prescription drug abuse an epidemic that now claims 30,000 lives a year.
The Obama administration strategy calls for new spending in the 2012 fiscal year–$123 million for drug prevention and $99 million for treatment programs.
The administration set a goal of a 15 percent reduction in the quantity of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. over the coming five years. The programs set up to achieve that goal include strengthened monitoring regimes and improving the disposal of unused pills, to prevent illegal stockpiles.
As The Hill reports, the strategy also recommends that lawmakers change federal law to require doctors to be trained on opioid safety as a condition of being allowed to prescribe controlled substances. And it would require drug manufacturers to develop educational initiatives to train health care practitioners about painkillers.
Separately, The New York Times reports that in Ohio, prescription drug abuse has exploded as a health menace among young people, to such a degree that overdoses are now a greater cause of accidental death than car accidents.
In the county including the declining Appalachian town of Portsmouth, for instance, one out of 10 babies born last year tested positive for drugs. Despite budgetary problems that have imposed severe fiscal constraints on the state, Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced $36 million in new programs last month.
