Across the country, 44,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2013, more than double the number in 1999, the study by the non-profit group, Trust for America’s Health found. Nearly 52 percent of the deaths were related to prescription drugs. The number of overdose deaths increased in 26 states in the four years to 2013, the study found, and decreased in only six states. [1]
Toxic medications
For those who have not done the math, 52% equals 22,880 who actually died from prescription drug overdoses. That only counts the number of people who were sufficiently autopsied so that the actual cause of death was scientifically determined. This tally of 22,880 does not include the thousands of other takers of pharmaceutical medications who also died from overdoses but were not categorized as such. Surely there are untold accidental deaths from what essentially amounts to drug poisoning.
Connie’s Comments
One prescription pill can cost anywhere from 0.10cents to $40k or more. One of my client who had a minor bruise on the leg and is used to taking Tramadol, a narcotic told her doctor that the degree of pain was a 10 from scale of 1-10 even when it is not true. The doctor prescribed VICODIN, a morphine based narcotic. I am dismayed as her caregiver, I have massaged, cooked whole and raw foods, kept my senior client away from toxic meds if possible. She has dementia and Parkinsons which can be managed with B12 for nerve pain, Vit C and D, magnesium and calcium , cod liver oil and other minerals and vitamins aside from nutrition, sleep and other holistic healing ways (oxygen therapy, light therapy, exercise, sunshine, essential oils, and more).
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/prescriptions-drugs-now-the-leading-cause-of-death-by-overdose/#ixzz3srAS0JI2
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Dad speaks out after Skittles party leads to son’s death by Rachel Grumman Bender
“Skittles parties” may sound innocent, but they are far from it: They’re an alarming trend in which teens raid their parents’ medicine cabinets and dump the prescription and over-the-counter drugs they’ve gathered into a communal bowl. The teens then take handfuls of a random assortment of pills, often with alcohol, to get high.
Several teens have overdosed after playing Russian roulette with pills at these parties, which are also known as “pharming parties.” Last month, five high school students in Marin County, California, overdosed after an apparent “Skittles party” and were taken to the hospital.
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According to KTVU, the students are all okay. But Mitchell Maxwell, a teen in Knoxville, Tennessee, wasn’t so lucky. He died from a drug overdose after a “Skittles party” in 2013, just days before he was supposed to head off to college.
“You worry more about drinking and driving rather than a party with prescription drugs,” his father, Austin Maxwell, told WVLT. “It’s a huge problem. There has to be more education because it’s just as dangerous as anything else out there.”
A new report on teen substance misuse by Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to disease prevention, shows that drug misuse is a growing problem. The report revealed that drug overdose death rates among 12- to 25-year-olds have risen dramatically in most states over the past 15 years. Overdose death rates have more than doubled in 18 states, more than tripled in 12 states, and quadrupled in five states. The rates were the highest in West Virginia and lowest in North Dakota.
Teens and young adults are gambling with their lives at “Skittles parties.” “There are tremendous risks,” Sharon Levy, M.D., director of the adolescent substance abuse program at Boston Children’s Hospital and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, tells Yahoo Parenting. “Typically, teens do not know what they’re taking — they might find pain medication, sedatives, or barbiturates. These are highly-controlled medications. Taking sedatives [alone] can risk an overdose. By mixing them, you vastly increase your risk of overdosing. You can stop breathing or have your heart stop.”
Levy points out that teens may mistakenly think these drugs are safer or less addictive than street drugs because they’ve been prescribed by a doctor. “They’ll assume because it’s a pharmaceutical product that it doesn’t have the same risks,” says Levy. “They will assume that they’re safe, and that’s just wrong. These medications have a very high abuse potential. People can absolutely become addicted to them.”
To keep prescription drugs away from teens, both Maxwell and Levy recommend that parents put the medications in a secure place. “If the dad had a knee replacement and there are whole bunch of drugs in the medicine cabinet, they need to be in a place that’s not easily accessible,” Levy says.
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Levy also recommends that parents keep track of the number of pills in the bottle, and when you’re done taking the prescription, discard any remaining pills. The FDA has a list of medications that are safe to flush, or you can return pills to the issuing pharmacy.
“People hang onto the leftover pills thinking, “Maybe I’ll need it again so I’ll just save it,’” notes Levy. “That’s a big mistake because kids can get into it. Even if you think your kid would never do it, you don’t know what their friends might do. A medicine cabinet is an exposed place, and it wouldn’t be hard for someone to take them.”