Painkiller Abuse Epidemic

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Executive Director and co-founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP).  In 2014, 19,000 Americans fatally overdosed on prescription opioid painkillers- a 16 percent increase from the previous year. According to government statistics, nearly 1.9 million Americans abuse or are dependent on legal opioids. Many experts claim that the rise in addiction comes from doctors over prescribing addictive opioids (like Vicodin, Percocet, and OxyContin) for minor ailments. In 2012 alone, physicians wrote 259 million opioid prescriptions, triple the number two decades ago. In just the past few years painkillers have become one of the largest health epidemics in our country and the doctors prescribing may be the source. Dr. Kolodney shares the facts of painkiller abuse.