Prescription for Disaster

Ed Normand

Attorney
(866) 735-1102 Ext 336

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A recent study shows that prescription medication related deaths have drastically increased in the last two decades. The deaths from prescription drugs increased over 3000 percent! Many of the deaths involved the use of prescription opiates which can be deadly when combined with even modest amounts of alcohol and other prescription drugs. Many times the deaths are from patients selling or abusing drugs. Sadly it also includes licensed physicians selling drugs to make money. In fact many physicians have nationwide practices where they prescribe hard drugs including narcotics and tranquilizers over the internet without ever even seeing the patient.

One of the most disturbing trends was the increase in deaths related to medication errors. The study found a 360 percent rise in deaths caused by prescription errors including pharmacy, and physician medication errors. Sometimes these errors can be caused just by sloppy handwriting hurried practices by physicians. Other causes also include overworked pharmacists or pharmacy using technicians too much without adequate supervision. There are also cases, including a very recent one, where the pharmaceutical manufacturer themselves mislabels the medication. In fact it happened with morphine which can lead to death if taken excessively. Moral of the story is be careful with medications even those that come from a pharmacy.