Prescription Drug Addiction Statistics and Facts

Selected Statistics

• According to the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an estimated 4.7 million Americans used prescription drugs nonmedically. (SAMHSA)
  • 2.5 million used pain relievers
  • 1.2 million used tranquilizers
  • 761,000 used stimulants
  • 225,000 used sedatives
• Pain reliever incidence increased-from 573,000 initiates in 1990 to 2.5 million initiates in 2000-and has remained stable through 2003. (SAMHSA)
• Five percent of patients admitted to publicly-funded drug rehab were there for non-heroin opiate, tranquilizer or sedative addictions.
• It is estimated that more than 50 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. When treating pain, healthcare providers have long wrestled with a dilemma: How to adequately relieve a patient's suffering, while avoiding the potential for that patient to become addicted to the pain medication. (SAMHSA)
• In 2000, 43 percent of those who ended up in hospital emergency rooms from drug overdoses-nearly a half million people-were there because of misusing prescription drugs. (SAMHSA)
• From 1998 to 2000, the number of people entering an emergency room because of misusing hydrocodone (Vicodin) rose 48 percent, oxycodone (OxyContin) 108 percent, and methadone 63 percent. The rates are intensifying: from mid-2000 to mid-2001, oxycodone went up in emergency room visits 44 percent. (SAMHSA)
• Over the past decade-and-a-half, the number of teen and young adult (ages 12 to 25) new abusers of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone (OxyContin) or hydrocodone (Vicodin) has grown five-fold (from 400,000 in the mid-eighties to 2 million in 2000). (SAMHSA)
• More than 17 percent of adults over 60, wittingly or not, abuse prescription drugs. (SAMHSA)
• Among 12- to 17-year-olds, girls are more likely than boys to use psychotherapeutic drugs nonmedically. (SAMHSA)

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