The prescription drug scourge

The prescription drug scourge

Canton Repository: The state has been waging an aggressive battle against “pill mills” run by unscrupulous doctors. Yet the problem of prescription drug addiction is still outrunning the solutions.

Again in 2011 (the latest year for which numbers are available), more people died in Ohio from drug overdoses than from any other cause of injury. It was the fifth straight year that overdoses eclipsed traffic accidents as the leading cause of death.

The issue goes well beyond waging “war” through law enforcement, as U.S. Sen. Rob Portman told the annual Ohio Opiate Conference recently. Calling the campaign to end abuse a war on drugs is “the wrong way to think of it,” he said, “... in part because millions of our co-workers, our families and others suffer from addiction disorder, and it’s not really a war, it’s more a public safety, public health issue.”