New Hampshire officials say they want to work more closely with the medical community to stop the growth in heroin abuse.
Attorney General Joe Foster spoke at a rally in Nashua Sunday. He said addicts need more access to treatment, and the state needs to do more to stop drugs from entering the state and more public awareness of the dangers of the drugs.
But Foster also said U.S. opioid prescriptions quadrupled from 1999 to 2010, a rate unlike any other country in the world.
“America makes up about 3-5 percent of the world’s population,” he said. “But we consume 80 percent of the world’s opiates.”
Foster said the state will likely exceed last year’s record number of drug-related overdose deaths. He said as of August 23, 207 people had died of drug overdoses this year in New Hampshire.
