Actor Heath Ledger’s highly publicized recent death is focusing more attention on the skyrocketing overdose fatalities in the US propelled mainly by prescription drugs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prescription drugs have overtaken cocaine and heroin combined as the leading cause of lethal overdoses. And treatment specialists across the country are seeing a huge increase in people with prescription drug problems of all kinds turning up at drug detox programs for help.

Although overdose deaths have been increasing since the early 1990s, recent prescription drug death statistics have risen so dramatically they have created the first increase in 25 years in the nation’s death rate from injuries of all kinds, the CDC said in a December study. Prescription drug abuse and overdose statistics are borne out in the changing demographic of people arriving at drug detox programs everywhere. A glance at news summaries from across the US shows an alarming rise in prescription drug dependencies requiring medical drug detox among ordinary professional working people – far more than heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other traditional street drugs.

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