Researchers Suggest Internet Availability Contributes to Rx Abuse

As internet availability has grown, so has treatment for prescription substance abuse, researchers found.

Anupam B. Jena, a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and Dana P. Goldman, director of the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, said the public health fear that Internet availability of commonly abused prescription drugs would increase drug abuse may be well founded.

The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, demonstrated a 10 percent increase in the availability of high-speed Internet service in a state was associated with an approximately 1 percent increase in admissions to a treatment facility center for prescription drug abuse.

U.S. households with internet access increased from 18 percent in 1997 to 61 percent in 2007. During this time, admissions for abuse of alcohol, cocaine and heroin—not readily purchased online— had minimal or negative growth.

However, from 2000 to 2007, states with higher internet growth experienced an accompanying rise in admissions to substance abuse treatment facilities, the study said.

"Our findings provide a first glimpse that growing Internet use may partially explain why U.S. prescription drug abuse rates have risen dramatically while other substance abuse rates have not," the researchers said in a statement.