Prescription Drug Abuse: CDC Answers Your Questions,  with these links to some great information on the subject.

PBS NewsHour recently aired a report on prescription drug abuse that led viewers to ask many questions. We asked the CDC to answer them.

One in 20 people in the United States say they’ve used prescription painkillers for non-medical reasons in the last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many ended up addicted.

In fact, overdoses tied to common opioid or narcotic pain relievers — like Vicodin (hydrocodone), OxyContin (oxycodone), Opana (oxymorphone), and methadone — killed more than 16,500 people in 2010. That’s roughly 45 deaths per day — quadruple the amount killed from those drugs in 1999.

Enough painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate each American adult every four hours for a month, CDC officials say. The quantity sold to pharmacies, hospitals and doctors offices in 2010 was four times higher than a decade earlier. And when doctors prescribe more than a patient needs, the drugs often make their way into the wrong hands.

Recently on the PBS NewsHour, health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser traveled to Oklahoma to profile the personal consequences of this addiction for people like University of Oklahoma linebacker Austin Box, who died suddenly after an accidental overdose in 2011. The Box family was stunned. They saw Austin regularly and had no idea he had a problem, let alone one that would kill him at age 22.

After the NewsHour story aired, we received dozens of questions about this growing problem. Below, CDC officials answer many of them.

Get the answers here: Prescription Drug Abuse: CDC Answers Your Questions

Need a review of the basics first? Read the “Top 10 Things the CDC Says You Should Know About Prescription Drug Abuse” and watch Bowser’s full NewsHour segment here: