Police departments have collected thousands of handguns through buy-back programs in communities throughout the country. Now they want the contents of your medicine cabinet.
Opiate painkillers and other prescription drugs, officials say, are driving addiction and crime like never before, with addicts singling out the homes of sick or elderly people and posing as potential buyers at open houses just to raid the medicine cabinets. The crimes, and the severity of the nation’s drug abuse problem, have so vexed the authorities that they are calling on citizens to surrender old bottles of potent pills like Vicodin, Percocet and Xanax.
On Saturday, the police will set up drop-off stations at a Wal-Mart in Pearland, Tex., a zoo in Wichita, Kan., a sports complex in Peoria, Ariz., and more than 4,000 other locations to oversee a prescription drug take-back program. Coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, it will be the first such effort with national scope.
The take-back day is being held as waves of data suggest the country’s prescription drug problem is vast and growing. In 17 states, deaths from drugs ”” both prescription and illegal ”” now exceed those from motor vehicle accidents, with opiate painkillers playing a leading role. The number of people seeking treatment for painkiller addiction jumped 400 percent from 1998 to 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
With respect to the second-to-last sentence to which Kendall points:
[blockquote]In 17 states, deaths from drugs — both prescription and illegal — now exceed those from motor vehicle accidents, with opiate painkillers playing a leading role.[/blockquote]
[url=http://www.slate.com/id/2268619/pagenum/all/]Jack Shafer in Slate[/url] notes:
[blockquote]The Times’ observation about death rates also ignores the vital fact that, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports, motor vehicle deaths have been dropping precipitously since 2005. In 2007, 41,259 people died in traffic crashes. In 2008, 37,423 died. In 2009 (PDF), just 33,808 died. That drug deaths now exceed crash deaths in 17 states may have a lot more to do with declining numbers of crashes than increasing numbers of drug deaths.[/blockquote]