We are seeing renewed attacks on prescription pain medications. Those orchestrating the attacks are citing increased abuse as their cause. The first of the most recent assaults on prescription pain medications began in 2006 with the overdose death of Daniel Smith, the son of Anna Nicole Smith, who likewise died of an overdose in 2007, and then Heath Ledger in 2008, and Michael Jackson in 2009. All of the aforementioned deaths were widely publicized and it was revealed that all were taking excessive amounts of prescription drugs which they were procuring through multiple sources and under multiple identities.
So how do the deaths of four individuals come to affect the lives of millions? The deaths of these celebrities were used as the foundation for a campaign designed to make prescription pain medications harder to acquire for every citizen, even those being prescribed the medications for documented chronic pain.
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