Abuse of prescription drugs is about to exceed the use of illicit street narcotics worldwide, and the shift has spawned a lethal new trade in counterfeit painkillers, sedatives and other medicines potent enough to kill, a global watchdog warned.
Prescription drug abuse already has outstripped traditional illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy in parts of Europe, Africa and South Asia, the U.N.-affiliated International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report for 2006.
In the United States alone, the abuse of painkillers, stimulants, tranquilizers and other prescription medications has gone beyond "practically all illicit drugs with the exception of cannabis," with users increasingly turning to them first, the Vienna-based group said.
Street corner so-called pain clinics have proliferated particularly in Florida where out-of-state pushers can illicitly collect scores of prescriptions from unethical doctors, have them filled locally to be transported to other states and sold for high profits to addicts.
In 2009 one Southern California hospital e-room physician attributed half its admissions to pain medications indiscriminately doled out by just three local doctors. DEA agents privately admit it is virtually impossible to reign in such immoral doctors because of a protectionist attitude of state and local medical societies. In just one case a doctor prescribed and a pharmacy filled $36,000 or pain medication to one 28-year old woman in a 30-day period.