Painkiller sales soar around US, fuel addiction

NEW YORK (AP) — Sales of a nations dual many renouned medication painkillers have exploded in new tools of a country, an Associated Press research shows, worrying experts who contend a pull to soothe patients pang is spawning an obsession epidemic.
From New Yorks Staten Island to Santa Fe, N.M., Drug Enforcement Administration total uncover thespian rises between 2000 and 2010 in a placement of oxycodone, a pivotal partial in OxyContin, Percocet and Percodan. Some places saw sales boost sixteenfold.
Meanwhile, a placement of hydrocodone, a pivotal partial in Vicodin, Norco and Lortab, is rising in Appalachia, a strange epicenter of a painkiller epidemic, as good as in a Midwest.
The increases have coincided with a call of overdose deaths, pharmacy robberies and other problems in New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Florida and other states. Opioid pain relievers, a problem that includes oxycodone and hydrocodone, caused 14,800 overdose deaths in 2008 alone, and a genocide fee is rising, a Cent...