Overdose Death Rate Surges, Legal Drugs Are Mostly to Blame

Drug

Oxycontin, Lorcet, and other pain control drugs are the leading cause of the tens of thousands of annual drug overdoses -- why the silence?

January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available

That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only

motor vehicle accidents (43,667)

firearms deaths (30,694

According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60%

"The death toll is equivalent to a hundred 757s crashing and killing everybody on board every year, but this doesn't make the news,"

"So many people have died, and we just don't care."

the official and press response to the CDC report has been "utter silence."

it is the middle-aged

not the young

who are doing most of the dying