Methadone accounts for one in every three deaths associated with prescription pain killers, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said in a press release Monday. The drug is commonly prescribed as a treatment for drug addiction.
The CDC says most people who die from the drug are using it as a pain killer.
"Deaths from opioid overdose have increased fourfold in the past decade, and methadone now accounts for nearly a third of opioid-associated deaths," CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said in a statement.
"We're not talking about methadone maintenance treatment in this data," said Frieden. "All of the evidence suggests that the increase in methadone related deaths is related to increased use of methadone to treat pain."
While methadone represents an unusually high number of pain killer deaths it represents only two percent of the opioid painkiller prescription in America.
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