National Prescription Drug Take Back Day will be held Saturday, April 29 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs. You can find a drop off location in your area online. If you are downtown this weekend, there will be a take back drug [...]
You may be contributing to one of Arizona’s biggest public health problems and not even realize it. Arizona has the 6th highest rate in the country for prescription drug misuse and drug overdose death. What’s really frightening is that more than 90% of Arizona youth that misuse prescription drugs get them from family and friends. The [...]
I’ve written several posts about how prescription painkillers kill more Arizonans than heroin and cocaine combined- but heroin is still the No. 1 killer among the illegal drugs. One hundred people died from a heroin overdose in AZ in 2013 (vs. about 1,000 from prescription drugs). Heroin is very addictive. According to NIDA, about 23% of people that try heroin will become [...]
50 years ago this week the 1st Surgeon General’s report on the health dangers of smoking was published- and we’re still fighting the battle. About 43 million Americans still smoke despite decades of warnings. Smoking kills more people every year than car crashes, suicides, murders, illegal and prescription drugs, and alcohol abuse combined (6,800 people [...]
Poisoning (including alcohol and prescription drugs) causes more deaths than car crashes in Arizona. A recent report issued by the Trust for America's Health ranked Arizona as having the 6th highest death rate for drug overdose in the country in 2010. Arizona also had one of the highest rates (4th highest at 5.7%) of nonmedical [...]
It’s been almost 50 years since the 1st Surgeon General’s report on the health dangers of smoking and we’re still fighting the battle. About 43 million Americans smoke despite decades of warnings. Science continues to uncover dangerous aspects of tobacco use. A new report highlights the threat to unborn children. The study published in Obstetrics [...]
When you think of the leading cause of deaths related to injuries, the first thing many people will think of is car crashes. While automobile crashes can be deadly—especially when drugs and alcohol are involved—the leading cause of injury-related deaths in Arizona is poisonings. A new report we recently released shows that there were 1,144 [...]
The number of prescriptions filled for opioid pain relievers has increased dramatically along with deaths from overdoses from painkillers (more than 1000 in AZ last year), leading the CDC to identify prescription drug abuse a problem of "epidemic" proportions. To better equip physicians against this crisis, the National Institute on Drug Abuse offers two free online [...]
Prescription drugs serve a very important purpose in health care, when they’re used the right way. That’s why physicians have to write the prescriptions – doctors who are trained to understand the purpose of the medication as well as the patient’s tolerance and the possibility of interactions. However, too many times, we keep medication after [...]
We’re committed to reducing substance abuse in Arizona and we’re consistently reminding the public to get rid of old medication to reduce the number of unintentional poisonings. With more Arizonans dying every year from misuse and abuse of prescription painkillers than car crashes- it's more important than ever to educate health care providers... so we’re hosting a forum to discuss this [...]
