From Naturalnews.com– the Florida Medical Examiners Commission posted the numbers from 2007.
In 2007, cocaine was responsible for 843 deaths, heroin for 121, methamphetamines for 25 and marijuana for zero, for a total of 989 deaths. In contrast, 2,328 people were killed by opioid painkillers, including Vicodin and Oxycontin, and 743 were killed by drugs containing benzodiazepine, including the depressants Valium and Xanax.
Alcohol directly caused 466 deaths, but was found in the bodies of 4,179 cadavers in all.
So it seems that the new epidemic is having corporate pharmaceutical companies push drugs “legally” as opposed to the individual pushing drugs “illicitly”? This is also evidently a problem in rural america as well.
The article goes on to state:
Florida pays careful attention to drug-related deaths, and as such has significantly better data on the problem than any other state. But a recent study conducted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) suggests that the problem is indeed national. According to the DEA, the number of people abusing prescription drugs in the United States has jumped 80 percent in six years to seven million, or more than those abusing cocaine, Ecstasy, heroin, hallucinogens an inhalants put together.
Not surprisingly, there has been a corresponding increase in deaths. According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of emergency room visits related to painkillers has increased by 153 percent since 1995. And a 2007 report by the Justice Department National Intelligence Drug Center found that deaths related to the opioid methadone jumped from 786 in 1999 to 3,849 in 2004 – an increase of 390 percent.
The stigma attached to a productive member of society that takes “non corporate/government approved” drugs versus the acceptance of the same productive member “going through the proper channels” to aquire “legal” drugs is a farce. Just another tangible sign that this world is run by clinically insane people.
Tags: Florida, illegal drugs, prescription drug deaths, rural areas
