In March 2010, Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna said his state was “losing more people to prescription drug overdoses in a typical year than to traffic accidents.” In Florida, the Medical Examiners commission found more than 1,500 people died of Oxycodone overdose  in 2010, a four-fold increase over the 350 who died in 2005. The supply of Oxycodone, says Jim Hall, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Substance Abuse at Nova Southeastern University, went “far beyond the legitimate medical need of the state.”

The epidemic is not likely to abate soon. The explosion of pain management clinics in Florida, dubbed “pill mills,” prompted the state Legislature last year to close a loophole that had allowed physicians to fill Oxy prescriptions on the spot. Authorities say a half-billion doses of Oxycodone and its generic equivalents were distributed in the state during 2009 alone. An unknown number wound up in the hands of “patients” who had come from out of state to have prescriptions filled by multiple pill mills, before driving home to resell the pills on the black market.

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