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Arizona county had more opioid prescriptions than people

Posted at 10:37 AM, Jan 29, 2018
and last updated 2018-01-29 12:37:53-05

A northwestern Arizona county had more opioid prescriptions than people in 2016.

An analysis by The Arizona Republic found that Mohave County dispensed 127.5 opioid prescriptions per 100 residents that year. Those numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the vast rural county in northwest Arizona was the state's most prolific opioid prescriptions county by that measure.

The CDC numbers also show that Arizona's rate of 70.2 opioid prescriptions per 100 people is slightly above the U.S. average of 66.5 per 100 people.

While the figures show that pain-pill prescriptions in Arizona dropped nearly 10 percent over the past decade, they have continued to rise in Mohave County and other rural counties such as Cochise and La Paz since 2007.

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Information from: The Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com