Americans Consume 80 Percent Of the World's Painkillers

[FarCenter]

Americans consume 80 percent of the world's painkillers, which translates into more than 110 tons of addictive opiates every year, the BBC reports.

The finding comes from congressional testimony by the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians.

Opiates such as such as Oxycontin and codeine are legal with a prescription but are also addictive.

Pharmacist Howard Levine told the BBC that Americans are clearly "being over-prescribed, over-medicated."


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-consume-80-percent-of-the-worlds-painkillers-2012-5

[Brickbat]

1. American Exceptionalism at its finest. By working harder and longer, cutting corners on safety and

comfort, trimming leave and making people come back to work maybe before they've healed up or recovered, mocking preventive approaches, automatically assuming that anyone who is too much in pain to work (or just wants to take a break!) is actually a slack-assed malingerer, we create a society where we are forced to use painkillers when we shouldn't have to just to stay afloat.

[Fawke Em]

2. Because our reality doesn't match our leaders' rhetoric.

We are no longer a great nation as a result of years of trickle-down economics, wealth concentrated at the top, a lack of accessible healthcare, the sucking of good-paying jobs into the "global economy" and the privatization of education and other public necessities.

We sorely want to believe we are still great: that we are the country that freed slaves, gave women the right to vote, combated Nazism, etc., but when we are faced with the reality that is no longer true, we must mask our pain behind a facade of mind-numbing drugs.

[jp11]

3. You'll have to forgive us we don't have universal healthcare, childcare, enough time off

enough jobs with a living wage to live without being all doped up all the time. PLUS it is big business keeping people hopped up on drugs while fighting a drug war that incarcerates millions of people with the added benefits of sending our money to fund drug cartels, terrorists, etc.

[get the red out]

13. +!

Totally agree.

[Lint Head]

4. One reason is because of the pain the corporations constantly inflict on 99% the US citizens.

They pay politicians to inflict the pain then corporate pharmaceuticals dole out pain killers for a profit. What a nice little racket they have going.

[Bake]

5. Yeah, I could use some myself.

Just sayin'.

Bake

[Lint Head]

8. Baking is not abusing a pharmaceutical.

Just saying. Going natural here.

[Bake]

9. Au natural, mon frere!

Baked. Baking. Bakery.



Bake

[jwirr]

6. My grandson is fighting off an addiction to oxycotin and Laritabs. I could easily have become

addicted to codeine as it has a lovely effect on me but I have always been afraid of anything that takes control out of my hands. Many of the painkillers that are addicting us come to us via the medical profession. Grandson broke his hip in 6 places when a girl friend ran over him with her car. We told the doctor he was addicted but they provided another 2 years of pills they knew he had problems with.

IMO he would have been much better off using marijuana. He uses it now (illegally) to help him stay away from all those nice legal drugs.

[Bake]

11. I blew a disc at C6-C7 some years ago

Vicodin was amazing. I realized pretty quickly that I would get to liking it a bit too much ...

Surgery fixed the disc--diskectomy and fusion--and no more Vike for me.



Bake

[shanti]

14. Vicodin

Last edited Tue May 15, 2012, 01:11 PM - Edit history (1)

I was prescribed vicodin a few years ago for a back issue. It just didn't work for me, so i stopped taking it. never had a problem with vicodin and addiction. 800 mg of motrin worked better, but the problem is that, although non addictive, taking that much motrin on a continual basis is bad for your liver.

[FarCenter]

7. Americans think they have a tougher life than people in other countries?

Japan for instance?

Incredible.

[Comrade Grumpy]

16. There is serious undertreatment of pain in other countries.

Maybe we're getting too many opioids, but other countries aren't getting enough.

The reasons include cost, doctors' unfamiliarity with them, and the global prohibition regime. All that Afghan opium could be pain killers, but is instead diverted to the global black market.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

10. And Romney vows, by the end of this decade, we'll be at 90%! (a la JFK, but pathetic) n/t

.

[Uben]

12. Not me....

...I hate to take PKs. They constipate me, and that can be worse than the pain. I only take one if I really, really, need it. I just threw away over a hundred pills my wife had gotten when she was battling breast cancer. She didn't like them for the same reason.
If I do have to take one, I always take a veggie laxative with it.

[snagglepuss]

15. Discarded drugs are toxic wastes and need to be disposed of properly.

Unused pills should never be thrown away or flushed down the toilet but returned to pharmacies they can be disposed of properly.