The number of people in New York city who died from overdose of prescription opioids such as oxycodone in 2006 was seven times the number in 1990, a study has found. Death from prescription opioid overdose was the only type of overdose death to rise in this period.

The study, published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, was conducted by researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Cornell University Weill School of Medicine in New York and the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco.1 Although much has been written about misuse of prescription drugs in rural areas, the epidemic has also occurred in cities. …