Legal drug deaths increasing

Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans than Illegal Drugs

Not surprisingly, there has been a corresponding increase in deaths.
According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of emergency
room visits related to painkillers has increased by 153 percent since
1995. And a 2007 report by the Justice Department National Intelligence
Drug Center found that deaths related to the opioid methadone jumped
from 786 in 1999 to 3,849 in 2004 - an increase of 390 percent.

Many experts attribute the trend to the increasing popularity among
doctors of prescribing painkillers, combined with a leap in
direct-to-consumer marketing by drug companies. For example,
promotional spending on Oxycontin increased threefold between 1996 and
2001, to $30 million per year.