Incredibly, a new study reveals that poisoning, primarily from prescription drugs, claims more lives than motor vehicle wrecks. The Bloomberg article on prescription-drug poisoning reports that 13.3 people per 100,000 died from prescription drug poisoning from 2007 to 2009.  In that same time period, 12.4 people per 100,000 died from motor vehicle collisions.   More than 90% of the unintentional poisoning involved prescription drugs, according to the study by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

     According to the article, deaths involving prescription drugs exceeded the number of deaths from heroin and cocaine combined.  And doing something to combat this problem is no easy task.  For example, in Kentucky the Governor supported a bill that would have put the prescription monitoring program under the control of the Attorney General so access to records would have been easier, but the Kentucky Medical Association resisted the measure on grounds of protecting patient privacy.  This effort will likely continue as the number of families losing loved ones to poisoning involving prescription drugs rises.  Finding the balance between adequate pain control and controlling overuse of prescription painkillers will be difficult, but it is certainly one we need to try to reach.