kankune wrote:
First of all how do you know that coal miners and as u say mountain dwellers are heroin addicts. And how the hell do u think it got here!!
Kentucky is the opioid capital of the world.
MANCHESTER, Ky.—This economically depressed city in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains is an image of frozen-in-time decline: empty storefronts with faded facades, sagging power lines, and aged streets with few stoplights.
But there is one type of business that seems to thrive: pharmacies.
Eleven drug stores, mostly independents, are scattered about a tiny city of 1,500 people. Many have opened in the past decade—four in the past three years. And prescription pain drugs are one of the best-selling items—the very best seller at some.
Most pharmacies here and in surrounding Clay County (population 21,000) lack the convenience-store trappings of national chains like CVS or Walgreen’s. They sell few items over the counter, focusing on prescriptions and little else.
(Phil Galewitz / Kaiser Health News)
Clay’s residents filled prescriptions for 2.2 million doses of hydrocodone and about 617,000 doses of oxycodone in the 12-month period ending last September—that’s about 150 doses for every man, woman, and child. About half as many doses of each drug were reported in Allen County (population 20,640), on the Tennessee border 160 miles southwest. Even smaller quantities were used in Breckenridge (population 20,018), another central Kentucky county.
An epidemic of prescription pain-killer use and abuse has spread across the U.S. in recent years. More than 183,000 people died from overdosing on prescription opioids from 1999 to 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 2 million Americans abused or were dependent to them in 2014, the CDC has reported.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/kentucky-opioids/515775/