With prescription pain medication seeming to get strong and more addictive by the day, it amazes me that companies now are producing pain killers 10 times more powerful than Vicodin. The new meds will be pure hydrocodone – never before legal in the United States.

Do You Think this is a Good Idea?

I am troubled because of the dark side that has accompanied the boom in sales of narcotic painkillers: Murders, pharmacy robberies and millions of dollars lost by hospitals that must treat overdose victims.

Thousands of legitimate pain patients are becoming addicted to powerful prescription painkillers in addition to the thousands more who abuse the drugs.

Prescription painkillers led to the deaths of almost 15,000 people in 2008, more than triple the 4,000 deaths in 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month.

Emergency room visits related to hydrocodone abuse have shot from 19,221 in 2000 to 86,258 in 2009, according to data compiled by the Drug Enforcement Administration. In Florida alone, hydrocodone caused 910 deaths and contributed to 1,803 others between 2003 and 2007.

What is Hydrocodone?

Hydrocodone belongs to family of drugs known as opiates or opioids because they are chemically similar to opium. They include morphine, heroin, oxycodone, codeine, methadone and hydromorphone.

Opiates block pain but also unleash intense feelings of well-being and can create physical dependence. The withdrawal symptoms are also intense, with users complaining of cramps, diarrhea, muddled thinking, nausea and vomiting.

After a while, opiates stop working, forcing users to take stronger doses or to try slightly different chemicals.

You’ve got a person on your product for life, and a doctor’s got a patient who’s never going to miss an appointment, because if they did and they didn’t get their prescription, they would feel very sick. It’s a terrific business model, and that’s what these companies want to get in on.

How to Stop the Abuse

Under pressure from the government, Purdue Pharma last year debuted a new OxyContin pill formula that “squishes” instead of crumbling when someone tries to crush it.

But Zogenix, whose drug is time-released but crushable, says there is not enough evidence to show that such tamper-resistant reformulations thwart abuse.

Ponder This

Do you think we need more potent painkillers? Any of my readers out there need something stronger than what is on the market? How do painkillers make you feel? I bet one side effect you experience is extreme irritability. Watch for this – painkillers taken in increasing doses increases irritability in a high percentage of users. Let me know what you think!

While seniors may not be the most computer-literate generation, more and more are coming of age to where they are comfortable with the internet of the computer and the Internet. Seniors are abusing prescription drugs and it is costing Americans plenty. A good online drug class may be the answer.

How Bad is the Problem?

Prescription drug abuse by elderly and disabled beneficiaries of Medicare cost the U.S. program nearly $150 million in 2008, highlighting an area where the government can seek to save health costs.

According to a government report some of these patients went to at least five doctors to get multiple prescriptions of drugs that are often abused.

In all, 170,000 people enrolled in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program went "doctor shopping" for drugs such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, powerful painkillers that can lead to addiction, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Those 170,000 who possibly abused the system were 1.8 percent of the patients who had prescriptions for these commonly abused drugs.

The study began in 2010, using data from 2008, the latest year then available. Medicare enrolled about 43 million people in 2008.

In one example, one individual received prescriptions from 87 different doctors during that year. Senator Scott Brown, a Republican from Massachusetts, dubbed it "taxpayer-funded drug dealing" at a hearing about the issue on Tuesday.

Brown said oxycodone could sell for over $5,000 in some areas of the country.

"Medicare Part D beneficiaries are abusing powerful drugs to fill their own addictions or to sell them on the street," said Delaware Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat and chairman of a subcommittee on federal financial management. "The controls ... put in place haven't

Fighting Medicare fraud has gained renewed urgency in recent months as a committee of Republicans and Democrats seeks ways to cut the nation's ballooning budget deficit ahead of a November deadline.

Everyone always has an angle to screw the government out of taxpayer money. We're just doing things so inefficiently, it's mind-boggling.