Marilyn Monroe. Jimi Hendrix. Bruce Lee. Keith Moon. Heath Ledger. All of these celebrities died due to an overdose of legal, prescription or over-the-counter drugs. And the list doesn’t end there. Countless other famous faces and tens of thousands of people last year, alone, died of overdosing on prescription drugs.
Painkillers are now considered the most lethal drugs around, outnumbering the deaths caused by illegal narcotics and even both heroin and cocaine combined. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Chief Thomas Frieden calls this an “epidemic”, yet most young people don’t realize how lethal legalized drugs really are.
“I think either cocaine or heroine is the most lethal,” said Evelyn Da Silva, a 16 year-old junior.
Da Silva isn’t alone in her assumptions. In today’s world drugs are a huge issue with people of all age-groups. Access to illegal drugs isn’t exactly easy as one-two-three, but access to  painkillers and other legal drugs is easily granted by many pharmacies and through friends and family members. According to the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed at least 10,000 people in 1990. In 1999 20,000 people died from overdose on legal drugs, and in 2005, at least 33,000 people died. That is a 200% increase of deaths by overdose.
Legal drug overdoses are just behind vehicular accidents which had 40,000 deaths in 2005, and overdoses are just in front of accidental firearm deaths. In 2008 legal drug overdoses accounted for 20,044 of the 36, 450 deaths from drug overdoes in the U.S., according to CDC researchers in the recent the journal entry for Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Unfortunately, for young people, sometimes it takes the death of a celebrity to recognize the effect of legalized drugs. Marilyn Monroe possibly died of two barbiturates (depressants). Jimi Hendrix overdosed on sleeping pills. Bruce Lee died of an allergic reaction to painkillers that made his brain swell. Keith Moon doverdosed on a drug that was supposed to help him with his alcoholic withdrawal. Most recently, Heath Ledger overdosed on some of his prescription drugs, which lead to his death.  Most of the drugs these famous people overdosed on on were simple painkillers, sleeping pills, or antidepressants. People this amazing are dying from something you can pick up from any pharmacy at any given time with a prescription.
Movie stars certainly aren’t invincible from addictions or the side effects of prescriptions and neither is anyone else. Legal drugs are just as addictive or dangerous as illegal narcotics.