The Next Prescription Drug Epidemic Is Already Here — and Nobody's Talking About It

For years, the opioid addiction and overdose crisis has been headline news across the United States, and rightly so. In 2012, 241,000 privately insured patients had an “opioid dependency diagnosis.” By 2016, that number had ballooned to 1.4 million, not including individuals on state-sponsored healthcare. Also in 2016, over 14,000 people died as a result of overdosing on traditional opioids like Percocet and Oxycontin.

The ongoing health epidemic continues to dominate the news cycle and politicians’ agendas, but there is another pharmaceutical crisis that receives far less attention. While opioids are highly addictive and dangerous, a separate class of legal drugs is also creating widespread dependency and fostering an increasing number of deaths: benzodiazepines.

Benzodiazepines, often referred to as “minor tranquilizers,” were first developed in the 1950s and became in-demand drugs by the 1960s, continuing to surge in popularity through the 1980s. They include widely-known and used drugs like Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, and Ativan and are used largely to treat anxiety disorders and insomnia.

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