updated 3:35 p.m. MT, Tues., Dec. 9, 2008
CHICAGO - Prescription painkillers account for most fatal overdoses from legal drugs in West Virginia and contribute to an exploding problem of overdoses across the United States that is most pronounced in rural areas, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday.
They said two-thirds of people who died from overdoses of legal pills in the state had no prescription for the drugs that killed them, suggesting many legal drugs are being diverted for non-medical uses.
"Use and abuse of prescription and particularly narcotic pain medications have increased dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years," said Aron Hall of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Rest of story on MSNBC
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