The Alarming Spread of Prescription Drug Deaths Across the U.S.

More than 300,000 people died from drug poisoning in the U.S. between 1999 and 2009. That first year, opioid analgesics—drugs like methadone, oxycodone, and hydrocodone—were responsible for 21 percent of drug poisoning deaths. By 2009, that number had increased to 42 percent, or 15,597 dead, making prescription painkillers the leading cause of drug-poisoning deaths.

We've known for some time which types of U.S. communities have been hit the hardest by this country's prescription pill crisis (rural ones) and which states have the biggest problems (those on the Gulf Coast, in Appalachia, and the southwest). But a new series of maps published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that the problem has spread, and now reaches virtually every part of the country.