Opioid User Numbers Continue to Increase

New government data says the number of Americans misusing painkillers has more than doubled in recent years.

FOX’s Jill Nado has more from Washington:

New research from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says about two million Americans qualified to be called prescription opioid addicts in 2013.

And the Institute is reporting that back in the year 2000, about two-percent of adult Americans admitted to using opoid painkillers when they didn’t have a doctor’s prescription. That number jumped to four percent 13 years later.

Men are more likely to abuse painkillers than women and that abuse happens most often in the Midwest and Western parts of the U.S.

In Washington, Jill Nado, FOX News.