By Shara Park
Chances are you or someone you know is being affected by prescription drug abuse. Hundreds of Utahns die each year from prescription drug overdose, and some of them are children who are too young to even know what they're getting into.

Prescription pain medications are the most frequently abused substances in the state. And it's the addicting power of opioids, found in prescriptions like OxyContin and Lortab that takes even the youngest users down a dark and sometimes unforgiving path.

Angela Watson cherishes the mementos and memories of her son Connor. He died last year of a prescription drug overdose. He was 13.  » More

By HeathPop Staff
Abusing painkillers is a big problem in the U.S. - about 12 million people said they used painkillers for non-medical reasons in the past year, according to recent CDC estimates.

A new study found rates of newborns born addicted to opiate drugs tripled over the past decade, driven by legal and illegal use of opioids like hydrocodone and oxycodone, CBS News reported. The number of newborns with withdrawal symptoms increased from a little more than 1 per 1,000 babies in 2000 to more than 3 per 1,000 in 2009, according to the study.  » More

By Deanna Pan

Something was wrong with Cole.

On a Saturday afternoon in mid-February 2011, Danielle Smoot walked into her 16-year-old son’s bedroom and found him curled under his New England Patriots bedspread.

Cole was a kid who could sleep until dinnertime if he wanted, but with school Monday through Friday, wrestling meets on Saturdays and church on Sundays, he hadn’t had much opportunity for that since winter break.  » More

Thousands of Addicts Face Involuntary Withdrawal

By Prithi Yelaja, CBC News
The move to replace the prescription painkiller OxyContin with a newer formulation less prone to misuse won’t solve the crisis of widespread abuse, experts say, unless there is additional training for physicians and treatment for addicts.

Following a similar move in the U.S. in 2010, Purdue Pharma will stop manufacturing OxyContin in Canada and replace it —starting Thursday — with OxyNeo pills, which have been treated to make them extremely difficult to break down.  » More

By Dr. Frieden
Thirty years ago, I attended medical school in New York. In the key lecture on pain management, the professor told us confidently that patients who received prescription narcotics for pain would not become addicted.

While pain management remains an essential patient right, a generation of health care professionals, patients, and families have learned the hard way how deeply misguided that assertion was. Narcotics - both illegal and legal - are dangerous drugs that can destroy lives and communities.

Millions of Americans struggle with substance abuse. Across the United States, overdoses involving opioid painkillers - a class of drugs with narcotic effects that includes hydrocodone, methadone, oxycodone - have skyrocketed in the past decade.  » More

By J.T. Junig, MD, PhD
I appreciate the feedback to my last post.  I had no doubt that the thoughts expressed in the original letter would ring such a chord, as I hear similar comments on a daily basis.  For people new to my blog this week, please review the letter in last week’s post, as that is where I’m starting today.

I had the same ‘love at first site’ reaction to opioids described by many people who become addicted.  My addiction began with a relatively weak opioid — codeine —but I still remember lying in bed as the effects of the substance drifted over me, easing the life-long depression that I had long accepted as ‘just how things are.’  » More