Painkiller Prescription Rates: Find Out Which States are the Dopiest

U.S. health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers in 2012, enough to give a bottle of the pills to every adult in the country. But your chances of ending up with those pills – and the risks that come with them – depend a lot on where you live, says a new report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report, published Tuesday, shows prescribing rates vary widely by state for drugs best known by brand names such as Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin. The highest rates are in the Southeast, led by Alabama. Providers in that state wrote 143 prescriptions for every 100 residents, while providers in Hawaii, the state with the lowest rate, wrote 52 for every 100 people, nearly three times fewer.

Other states with very high rates include Tennessee and West Virginia; states with low rates include California and New York.

Rates of painful illness and injuries do not vary enough from place to place to explain the differences, CDC says. Instead, high prescribing rates often reflect inappropriate uses of the drugs – which contribute to high rates of opioid painkiller overdoses, officials say.

The map shows the Prescribing rates per 100 persons.
CLICK MAP to ENLARGE

"Overdoses from opioid narcotics are a serious problem across the country and we know opioid overdoses tend to be highest where opioids get the highest use," says CDC director Tom Frieden. He says the medications "can be an important tool for doctors to use ... but they are not the answer every time someone has pain."

The medications, containing narcotics such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, are intended for moderate to severe pain, the kind common after surgery or a serious injury. But they are commonly abused. Even patients who start taking the medications for legitimate reasons can get addicted and face overdose risks. CDC says 46 people in the United States die from prescription painkiller overdoses each day.

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