From USA Today:

Prescription drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem, the White House Office on National Drug Policy says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified the misuse of these powerful painkillers as an epidemic, with 1.3 million emergency room visits in 2010, a 115% increase since 2004. Overdose deaths on opioid pain relievers surpassed deaths from heroin and cocaine for the first time in 2008.

This rise of Opana abuse illustrates the adaptability of drug addicts and the never-ending challenge facing law enforcement authorities, addiction specialists and pharmaceutical companies. Just when they think they have curbed abuse and stopped trafficking of one drug, another fills the void. Opana's dangerous new popularity arose when OxyContin's manufacturer changed its formula to deter users from crushing, breaking or dissolving the pill so it could be snorted or injected to achieve a high.

As a new, harder-to-abuse Opana formulation replaces the old formula, police and addiction experts expect heroin to fill that void.

For years, drug abusers favored an extended-release version of OxyContin, a narcotic painkiller, for a powerful high. Over the past decade, its abuse was so prevalent that the drug became a household name.

Drug abusers could crush or dissolve the pill's time-release coating to get the full punch of the opioid oxycodone. But Purdue Pharma, OxyContin's manufacturer, reformulated it in August 2010, making it nearly impossible to crush, dissolve and inject. By the beginning of 2011, more than 95% of prescriptions were being filled with reformulated OxyContin, Purdue spokesman James Heins said.

Though people could still abuse the drug by taking larger quantities, some addicts craved the injectable high.

"At first, people tried to defeat it," McGuire said. "Then, Opana started to pop up like crazy."

Opana ER, an extended-release painkiller containing oxymorphone, came on the market in 2006. Endo Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer, completed development of a crush-resistant pill in 2010 but did not get approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until late last year, said Endo senior vice president Blaine Davis.

On June 14, the FDA moved the old Opana formulation to its list of discontinued drugs. Davis said he doesn't know how much remains on the market.

From CounterPunch:

2010 will go down as the year the diet pill Meridia and pain pill Darvon were withdrawn from the market and the heart-attack associated diabetes drug Avandia was severely restricted.

Additionally, here are the drugs which make 2010's Hall of Shame:

• Yaz and Yasmin
• Lyrica, Topamax and Lamictal
• Humira, Prolia and TNF Blockers
• Chantix
• Ambien
• Tamoxifen
• Lipitor and Crestor
• Boniva
• Prempro
• Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, SSRIs
• Effexor, Cymbalta, Pristiq, SNRIs
• Seroquel, Zyprexa, Geodon, atypical antipsychotics
• Ritalin, Concerta, Strattera, Adderall and ADHD Drugs
• Gardasil and Cervarix Vaccines
• Foradil Aerolizer, Serevent Diskus, Advair and Symbicort
• Singulair and Accolate, leukotriene receptor antagonists
   

From The Sierra Vista Herald:

When police officer James Boubelik pulls someone over for reckless driving, he looks for clues of impairment like dilated pupils, slurred speech or the smell of alcohol.

But it’s more than just alcohol and illegal drugs that Boubelik and other officers are looking for these days. They’re also looking for drivers impaired by legal, prescription drugs — harder to recognize than drunken driving and sometimes harder to prosecute.

From NorthJersey.com:

As more doctors prescribe Xanax, Vicodin and Oxycodone, police are seeing a rise in more DWIs, not with driving under the influence of alcohol, but with drivers on legally obtained painkillers. According to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), statistics speak for themselves. Between 1997 and 2007, according to a University of Michigan study, treatment admissions for prescription painkillers increased more than 400 percent. The DEA said that between 2004 and 2008, the number of visits to hospital emergency departments involving the non-medical use of narcotic painkillers increased 111 percent. Area cops are reporting making more prescription medication-related DWI arrests and area lawyers are now vigorously defending those cases in court.

From The Washington Post:

With the abuse of prescription drugs continuing to rise, the Drug Enforcement Administration is for the first time asking people nationwide to turn in their expired, unused and unwanted prescription medicines at more than 4,000 locations on Saturday.

The first national "Take Back Day" aims to collect powerful drugs that are beneficial to patients, but that could easily fall into the wrong hands if left to languish in homes. People will be able to turn in pills, powders and other solid medicines anonymously and without fear of prosecution; authorities will then safely destroy the medications by incinerating them.

From HealthDay News:

Illegal drug use in the United States increased from 2008 to 2009, federal drug officials reported Thursday, citing growing acceptance of marijuana and an upswing in ecstasy and methamphetamine use.

Driven largely by growing use of marijuana, drug use among those aged 12 and older rose from 8 percent in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2009, according to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This represents the highest usage in nearly a decade, officials said.

The report, based on a survey of some 67,500 people throughout the country, noted non-medical use of prescription drugs rose from 2.5 percent in 2008 to 2.8 percent in 2009.

Monthly use of ecstasy climbed from 555,000 in 2008 to 760,000 in 2009. The number of methamphetamine users shot up, too, from 314,000 to 502,000 over the year, according to the report.

From msnbc.com:

Whether the drug mistake was caused by a garbled telephone message, a typing error or a computer problem, Shelley Sanders isn’t sure.

She just knows that her 62-year-old mother was supposed to get one kind of medication, a pain drug called Lyrica, but instead received another, an anti-epilepsy drug called Lamictal, and in an initial dose far higher than any doctor would recommend.

And she knows that within days of taking the 150-milligram pills, Linda Sanders, a soft-spoken Florida grandmother who went to YMCA aerobics classes three times a week, got a gun from the bedroom and shot herself in the head.

Only afterward did Shelley Sanders learn that suicidal actions are a known risk of Lamictal and that her mother’s death closely followed one of the more than 5 million wrong-drug errors that occur each year, including many caused by similar-sounding mixed-up names.

Whether it’s confusing the migraine drug Topamax with the blood pressure drug Toprol-XL, or the antihistamine Zyrtec with the antipsychotic Zyprexa, mistakes caused by drug name mix-ups continue to happen a decade after a groundbreaking Institute of Medicine report first declared that 7,000 people in the U.S. died from medication errors each year.

Today, some 1,500 drugs have names so similar they’ve been confused with one or more other medications, according to a 2008 report by U.S. Pharmacopeia, the group that sets standards for medications in this country.

Just last month, the international drugmaker Takeda agreed to change the name of its new heartburn drug Kapidex after reports of confusion with the prostate cancer drug Casodex. In some cases, women received a cancer drug intended only for men.

It's the first such name change since the federal Food and Drug Administration launched a new "Safe Use Initiative" last November aimed at curbing the number of medication errors.

U.S. outpatient pharmacies filled 3.9 billion prescriptions in 2009, according to most recent figures from Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions. Overall, the dispensing error rate is 1.7 percent, which translates into more than 66 million drug mistakes a year.

“On a percentage basis, they’re very rare,” noted Bruce Lambert, a professor in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Pharmacy. “If you’re among that small group, it’s cold comfort to you.”

Bad handwriting, workplace distractions, inexperienced staff and worker shortages all have been blamed for the problem. But Lambert says it’s even more basic than that.

“The names themselves are intrinsically confusing,” he said. “The way that the human mind is organized, we’re prone to confusing names that sound alike.”

Pharmacy technicians are most often involved in look-alike, sound-alike errors, with about 38 percent implicated in initial reports, according to the Pharmacopeia report. They were followed by pharmacists at nearly 24 percent and registered nurses at about 20 percent. Doctors accounted for about 7 percent.

From the ASPCA:

With various dangers lurking in corners and cabinets, the home can be a minefield of poisons for our pets. In 2009, the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) in Urbana, IL, handled more than 140,000 cases of pets exposed to toxic substances, many of which included everyday household products. Don’t leave it up to Fido or Fluffy to keep themselves safe. Below is a list of the top 10 pet poisons that affected our furry friends in 2009.

Human Medications - Last year, the ASPCA managed 45,816 calls involving prescription and over-the-counter drugs such as painkillers, cold medications, antidepressants and dietary supplements. Pets often snatch pill vials from counters and nightstands or gobble up medications accidentally dropped on the floor.

Insecticides - In 2009, our toxicologists fielded 29,020 calls related to insecticides. One of the most common incidents involved the misuse of flea and tick products—such as applying the wrong topical treatment to the wrong species.

People Food - People food like grapes, raisins, avocado and products containing xylitol, like gum, can seriously disable our furry friends, and accounted for more than 17,453 cases in 2009.

Plants - Common houseplants were the subject of 7,858 calls to APCC in 2009. Varieties such as azalea, rhododendron, sago palm, lilies, kalanchoe and schefflera are often found in homes and can be harmful to pets.

Veterinary Medications - Even though veterinary medications are intended for pets, they’re often misapplied or improperly dispensed by well-meaning pet parents.

Rodenticides - Last year, the ASPCA received 6,639 calls about pets who had accidentally ingested rat and mouse poisons. Many baits used to attract rodents contain inactive ingredients that are attractive to pets as well.

Household Cleaners - These products, when inhaled by our furry friends, can cause serious gastrointestinal distress and irritation to the respiratory tract.

Heavy Metals - Heavy metals such as lead, zinc and mercury accounted for 3,304 cases of pet poisonings in 2009.

Garden Products - Last year, the ASPCA fielded 2,329 calls related to fertilizer exposure, which can cause severe gastric upset and possibly gastrointestinal obstruction.

Chemical Hazards - A category on the rise, chemical hazards—found in ethylene glycol antifreeze, paint thinner, drain cleaners and pool/spa chemicals—form a substantial danger to pets.

From The Christian Science Monitor:

A national study widely considered to be an important indicator of youth drug abuse showed progress with some drugs but widespread problems with marijuana and prescription or over-the-counter drugs.

The study, compiled by the University of Michigan for the federal National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that 7 of the 10 drugs most abused by high school seniors are prescription or over-the-counter drugs acquired primarily from teens’ friends or relatives.

The study, released Monday, focuses on eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders. Within that group, use-rates for some substances have improved – notably hallucinogens and cocaine by 12th graders and methamphetamines among eighth graders. Cigarette use, too, continued to drop significantly. In 1997, 36.5 percent of 12th-graders said they'd smoked a cigarette during the past month. This year, 20.1 percent said they had.

But use of inhalants by 10th-graders increased, and use of marijuana across all three grade-levels increased. The study attributed the rise, at least in part, to the growing acceptance of marijuana use for medicinal purposes. That trend has made the drug appear less dangerous to teens, the study said.

From SeattlePI.com:

In 16 states and counting, drugs now kill more people than auto accidents do, the government said Wednesday.

Experts said the startling shift reflects two opposite trends: Driving is becoming safer, and the legal and illegal use of powerful prescription painkillers is on the rise.

For decades, traffic accidents have been the biggest cause of injury-related death in the U.S., and they are still No. 1. But drug overdoses are pulling ahead in one state after another.

The drug-related death rate roughly doubled from the late 1990s to 2006, according to the most recent CDC data.

The number of states in which drug-related deaths have overtaken traffic fatalities has gone from eight in 2003 to 12 in 2005, and 16 in 2006. They are: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

While cocaine and heroin continue to be significant killers, most of the increase is attributed to prescription opiates such as the painkillers methadone, Oxycontin and Vicodin.

From 1999 to 2006, death rates for such medications climbed for every age group. Deaths from methadone (from msnbc.com) alone increased sevenfold, according to the CDC.

It's not all black market stuff, either.

About half of the opiate medication deaths in King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, involved people who got their drugs through legal prescriptions, said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of Washington research scientist.

"There has been a dramatic change in how doctors prescribe opiates," Banta-Green said.

In the 1990s, he said, doctors began recognizing that chronic pain was undertreated. The prescribing of painkillers escalated after that. Today, about one in five U.S. adults and one in 10 adolescents are prescribed an opiate each year, he said.

Using death certificate data, CDC researchers counted more than 45,000 U.S. deaths nationwide from traffic accidents in 2006, and about 39,000 from drug-induced causes.

About 90 percent of those drug fatalities are sudden deaths from overdoses, but the count includes people who died from organ damage from long-term drug use or abuse.

In Massachusetts, there were more than 1,000 drug-related deaths in 2006, double the number of traffic deaths, according to the CDC. Michigan had about 500 more drug deaths than vehicle fatalities, and New York had 350 more.

Nationally, the death rate from traffic accidents fell by about 6.5 percent from 1999 through 2006 - from 15.3 deaths per 100,000 people to 14.3 per 100,000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.