Rural states led the rise in prescription overdoses

We reported last week that overdoses of prescription drugs increased greatly in the last few years, especially in largely rural states, led by West Virginia. Now Julie Ardery of the Daily Yonder takes a closer look at the Centers for Disease Control study and delivers a state-by-state map of the rates of overdoses in 2004 that were not deemed intentional:
Among the findings Ardery notes: The surge in prescription-drug addiction and overdoses can be traced to a 1997 liberalization of the guidelines for dispensing pain medications. "As so many more powerful analgesic drugs became widely available, so did unsupervised use of these medications. The researchers found that of those who died from accidental prescription drug overdose in West Virginia during 2006, 63 percent had no record of prescription for these drugs." (Read more)