As the Number of Deaths Attributed to Legal Painkillers Surpasses Those of Illicit Drugs, Health Experts Around the Region Are Sounding the Alarm Deaths from prescription painkillers have soared in Spokane and across Washington during the past decade, according to new research that warns of danger as close as the bathroom medicine cabinet. Popular drugs such as hydrocodone and methadone fueled an 800 percent increase in statewide deaths linked to prescriptionopiates, which jumped from 45 in 1995 to 411 in 2004, state health researchers found. [continues 1366 words]
Supplies of prescription painkillers have increased exponentially since the late 1990s, when regulations governing their use were relaxed. In Washington, for instance, the volume of methadone distributed from manufacturers to hospitals and pharmacies grew by nearly 975 percent between 1997 and 2004, according to federal Drug Enforcement Administration statistics. Oxycodone supplies surged by nearly 600 percent, state researchers noted. The methadone figures don't include use of the drug for rehabilitating addicts in places such as the methadone clinic run by the Spokane Regional Health District. The drugs used there come in a liquid form aimed at thwarting illegal distribution. [continues 598 words]
CHEWELAH - A 12-year-old brings hydrocodone tablets to a middle-school slumber party. A high-schooler steals methadone pills from her parents' medicine cabinet. A 21-year-old cuts open a 12-hour Fentanyl patch, squeezes the drug onto tinfoil, and smokes the entire contents through a "tooter," the stripped plastic cartridge from a Bic pen. He's still holding it in his hand when police break down the bathroom door. He's dead. If Mark Selle sounds upset, it's because the superintendent of Chewelah's Valley and Orient school districts has seen every one of these things happen in his community. [continues 1109 words]
