Topic:

Painful Painkillers

Photo by Tiffany Brown / Las Vegas Sun

Prescription drugs confiscated by the coroner's office in the past six weeks are displayed at the coroner's offices Wednesday.

Interactive

Compare the annual change in prescription narcotic consumption across the country between 1997 and 2006.

A Sun investigation reveals a confounding crisis — Nevadans consume about twice the national average per capita of prescription narcotics.

Painkillers play a vital role in medicine, but experts struggle to explain why so many are consumed in Nevada.

Theories abound — the black market is thriving, tourists drive up the numbers and hurried doctors may too quickly write prescriptions.

One thing is sure: As the rate of painkiller use climbs, so too does abuse. And Clark County's overdose deaths from prescription narcotics now outnumber those from street drugs.

How we did it: Tracking Nevadans' Appetite for Painkillers

Archive highlights

When drugs bring harm not healing

Wed, Oct 15, 2008

By Marshall Allen

Two days before their first wedding anniversary, Andrea Duncan woke up to find her husband, Clint, beside her, dead of a prescription drug overdose. Instead of celebrating their marriage, she ...

Her outlook darkened as her addiction deepened, journal details

Wed, Oct 15, 2008

By Marshall Allen

Staci Voyda’s journal is a stark look into prescription narcotic addiction.

Patient's husband remembers her wry humor, last pain-filled weeks

Wed, Oct 15, 2008

By Marshall Allen

Barbara Baile’s death was both agonizing and avoidable, leaving her husband of 50 years painfully lonely.

The painful truth about Nevada

Sun, Jul 6, 2008

By Marshall Allen, Alex Richards

The New Addiction: Part 1: Nevadans consume about twice the national average of several prescription painkillers, making us among the most narcotic-addled populations in the United States, a Sun analysis ...

All stories

'This is an issue of rural prosperity': Nevada roundtable spotlights opioid epidemic in small communities

Sun, Mar 25, 2018

By Ricardo Torres-Cortez

In the last few years, the opioid epidemic has battered every corner of the United States, and its victims come from all walks of life, but rural portions of the ...

Can this federal judge solve America's opioid crisis?

Tue, Mar 6, 2018

By Jan Hoffman, New York Times News Service

Judge Dan Aaron Polster of the Northern District of Ohio has perhaps the most daunting legal challenge in the country: resolving more than 400 federal lawsuits brought by ...

New Nevada law to begin fast-track opioid data collection

Tue, Dec 26, 2017

By Ken Ritter, Associated Press

Nevada is expanding provisions of a prescription medication registry designed to fast-track the collection of information about overdose deaths, flag excess dispensing of powerful painkillers, and help curb ...

Clark County to file opioid lawsuit against big pharma

Tue, Dec 5, 2017

By April Corbin

Clark County commissioners voted unanimously today to sue major pharmaceutical companies for their role in creating the opioid epidemic. District Attorney Steve Wolfson will work with Las Vegas-based law firm ...

House Republicans aim to yank tax credits for orphan drugs

Sat, Nov 4, 2017

By Sarah Jane Tribble, Kaiser Health News

As part of a sweeping tax reform bill, House Republicans on Thursday proposed eliminating billions of dollars in corporate tax credits that have played a key role in the booming ...

Age of anxiety: Prozac nation is now the United States of Ativan

Mon, Jun 19, 2017

By Alex Williams, New York Times News Service

As depression was to the 1990s — summoned forth by Kurt Cobain, “Listening to Prozac,” Seattle fog and Temple of the Dog dirges on MTV, viewed from under a flannel ...

Bill allows pharmacists to dispense opioid overdose antidotes without prescription

Thu, Jun 1, 2017

By Yvonne Gonzalez

Sprinkle said reforms from the 2015 session opened up access to Narcan for first responders and some others. Family members and friends of drug users ...

Health district, humanitarian crusaders make the case for local needle exchanges

Mon, Apr 24, 2017

By April Corbin

Deaths from opioid overdose have quadrupled since 1999. The CDC points to the dramatic rise in doctors prescribing oxycodone, fentanyl and methadone to treat pain — legal substances that can ...

Pouches aim to take leftover prescription drugs out of valley homes

Sat, Dec 3, 2016

By Ricardo Torres-Cortez

A student narrating the presentation explained the simple chemistry of the process: The drug contents bind to charcoal inside the pouch and are deactivated ...

Advocates hope shaming drugmakers discourages price spikes

Mon, Jul 11, 2016

By Jonathan Cooper, Associated Press

Frustrated by the rising cost of prescription drugs, California health advocates hope sunlight and a dose of shame will discourage drugmakers from raising their prices too quickly or introducing new ...

We have a prescription pill problem

Mon, Sep 28, 2015

By Megan Messerly

Fourteen years sober from drugs, Lin Michaels was written two prescriptions for narcotic painkillers by her doctor: one for hydrocodone, another for methadone. She was in pain. It was the ...

Chasing the synthetic high: ‘Legal’ drugs are causing trouble for law enforcement

Mon, Jun 22, 2015

By Andrea Domanick

They come with names like Vanilla Sky, Cloud 9 and Ivory Wave — pale, flaky powders in packets decorated with bubbles or flowers and labeled for innocuous uses: potpourri, plant ...

Event offers chance to get rid of unwanted prescription meds

Tue, May 26, 2015

By Jackie Valley

Are unwanted prescription medications cluttering your cabinets? A prescription pill turn-in event will be held from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday at ...

Season to suffer: Here’s why your allergies are flaring up

Thu, Mar 19, 2015

By Katie Visconti

Las Vegas allergy sufferers are in for a long week, as a high pollen forecast will continue to trigger the all-too-familiar symptoms of sneezing, runny nose, sore throat and watery ...

Is relief from Alzheimer’s disease on the horizon?

Wed, Nov 19, 2014

By Jackie Valley

The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health hopes to enroll 10 to 15 people with Alzheimer's disease in a study of a drug that could ...