Pill-Poppers Flock to Florida

Staten Island leads the way

(NEWSER) - New York City's special narcotics prosecutor unveiled some eye-popping numbers about prescription drugs in the Big Apple, according to the Wall Street Journal :

• One million prescriptions for the pain reliever oxycodone—the generic name for Oxycontin—were filled in 2010. That's enough for 1 in 8 residents of the five boroughs, or 13% of the population.
• The percentage is 28% in Staten Island. Add in Vicodin, and it's 33%.
• The 1 million figure has doubled since 2007.

Kermit, West Virginia, home to die-hard addicts

(NEWSER) - A tiny coal-mining town of barely 300 people and no supermarket is home to one booming business: pharmacies. In Kermit, West Virginia, two Sav-Rites alone moved 3.2 million doses of hydrocodone in 2006—a tad more than the 97,000 doses the average pharmacy sells in a year, reports Salon . Their customers were pill addicts from all over the Eastern seaboard. Now prosecutors have closed the Sav-Rites, but more "pill mills" are cropping up in a game of Whac-A-Mole against America's biggest drug menace today: prescription medicine. More»

Pharmacies sold equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone in 2010

(NEWSER) - Prescription painkiller addiction is a problem that's only getting uglier, reports the AP after analyzing a slew of DEA and pharmaceutical figures. The report focuses on sales of America's leading two prescription painkillers: oxycodone (the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet, and Percodan) and hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco, and Lortab). Among its more stunning findings:

• Addiction, long rooted in Appalachia and tony suburbs, has begun to spread well beyond those two centers; hydrocodone sales are specifically increasing in the Midwest

Overdoses now leading cause of accidental death in Scioto County

(NEWSER) - Scioto County sits in the southern tip of Ohio, an unremarkable piece of Appalachia save for the deadly tidal wave of prescription drugs washing over its population. Overdoses have quadrupled over the past decade, reports the New York Times, and are now the leading cause of accidental death, ahead of even car crashes. One in 10 babies born here tests positive for drugs; the most popular among the area's addicts is OxyContin. “It was moving so fast that families were caught totally off guard," says a counselor. "They had no idea what they were dealing with.” More»

Actress was vomiting before death

(NEWSER) - Friends and those who worked with Brittany Murphy were concerned about her recent stick thin, sickly appearance. “She looked painfully thin, even sick. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in who knows how long, her skin was terrible,” said one observer. Magazine editors recently opted not to use photos of Murphy at an event early this month because of her appearance. "She looked terrible. So thin. We all commented on it,” an editor at a celebrity weekly told MSNBC . More»