Huge Rise in Deaths from Prescription Drug Abuse in Florida

A recent report from the United States CDC shows just how disturbing abuse of prescription drugs have become in the state of Florida. The coroner’s office in Pinellas-Pasco county show deaths from prescription drugs, especially Oxycodone, has increased by over 250 percent in the last six years.

Deaths from illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin have ironically fallen by almost 70 percent and yet deaths from Percocet has hit the top of the list reaching more than 250 percent. All of the deaths reported were from accidental prescription drug overdoses and released in a report from My Fox Tampa Bay.

Dr. Jon Thogmartin, medical examiner in Pinellas-Pasco county, says his district appears to be the highest in the 24 districts regarding fatal overdoses or those deaths related to drugs and that they have even more deaths than in Dade County, with a population nearly twice as large. Xanax deaths also rose by 233 percent and there were three other prescription drugs that finished off the top five in the list including methadone, morphine and hydroquinone. The Pinellas-Pasco office of the medical examiner has seen more deaths from overdoses on prescription drugs than they have from automobile crashes in their local area.

Sadly, there were more fatalities from accidental drug overdoses than combined deaths from such things as drowning, poisonings from carbon monoxide or fires, and blunt traumas in the Tampa area and this is a very disturbing trend medical examiners in this area are facing.