One Baby Born Every Hour is Addicted to Opiates!

That is one hell of a statistic. One baby born every hour, is addicted to Opiate drugs in the United States. 

A recent study by University of Michigan found that the reason for new borns having neonatal abstinence syndrome - basically babies, once born, show withdrawal symptoms from the drug(s) - has tripled in the past few years. The reason for this unfortunate circumstance is because of an increase in  mothers' use of drugs while pregnant

"Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report which found that over the last decade sales for opiate pain relievers like OxyContin and Vicodin have quadrupled," says Stephen W. Patrick, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., lead author of the study and a fellow in the University of Michigan's Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine.

Patrick, a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Michigan, says multiple factors are likely to blame for the dramatic spike in use of opiate pain relievers, from their potential overuse for chronic pain to illegal sales of these drugs on the street. Overall, the U-M study showed that the number of mothers using opiate drugs increased five times over the last decade.

Source: science daily

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