Prescribing Opioid Painkiller: Location Makes a Difference

This month’s Vital Signs (www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/) reports health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers in 2012, enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills. Higher prescribing of painkillers is associated with m”ore overdose deaths. The report also has examples of states that reversed its overdose trend.”