Prescription drugs responsible for more deaths than traffic accidents, study finds

(NaturalNews) Every 14 minutes, a person is killed by prescription drugs -- and unlike most other causes of preventable death, which have been on the decline for years, medication-induced deaths are on the upswing across the US. According to a recent analysis conducted by the Los Angeles Times (LA Times), drug-induced deaths have become so prevalent that their average yearly total now exceeds the number of deaths caused by traffic accidents.

It is truly a sad day in the world when the very medications prescribed for treating disease are one of the leading causes of death, including among young children. And based on data retrieved by the LA Times, the number of drug fatalities has doubled within the past ten years, as legal drugs now kill nearly 38,000 Americans every single year -- and these are just the deaths about which we know.

Prescription painkillers like OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax, Soma, and new-drug-on-the-block Fentanyl -- Fentanyl, which comes in the form of patches and lollipops, is 100 times strong than morphine -- are largely responsible for the uptick in drug deaths. Individuals both young and old, many of whom are specifically prescribed these drugs by their doctors for pain or anxiety, are increasingly overdosing on them, according to reports.

The tragic reality of the situation is that otherwise normal individuals, many of whom had no prior history of drug abuse or addiction, become hooked on prescription drugs. When the effects of one drug begins to lose its potency, many patients begin combining them with others just to maintain the same high they had before -- and the end result is often death.

"The problem is right here under our noses in our medicine cabinets," Laz Salinas, a sheriff's commander in Santa Barbara, Cal., is quoted as saying in the LA Times report.

 Prescription painkillers, mentions the report, killed 15-year-old Nolan Smith of Aliso Viejo, Cal., back in 2009, as well as a 19-year-old Army recruit, a groom at a wedding, a teenage honor student, and even both parents of a young child. In other words, common individuals of all ages are now dying on a regular basis as a result of Big Pharma's rampant dispensation of toxic poisons peddled as "medicine."

And since as little as one percent of drug-induced injuries and deaths are even reported in the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) adverse event tracking system, the actual number of drug deaths is likely far higher than what has been publicly released. Based on 2008 data from an Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), estimates suggest that as many as half a million Americans die every year from taking pharmaceutical drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/024632_d...).

Sources for this story include:

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-d...
http://www.naturalnews.com/033639_prescription_drugs_deaths.html