15. Bergen County : Bergen had a rate of 470 MME per person in 2015, an 18 percent drop from 2010. This put it in the second-lowest quartile of counties in the United States.
Updated July 07, 2017
Posted July 07, 2017
By Erin Petenko
After years of increasing opioid use, the nation is experiencing a downturn in doctors handing out prescriptions for the class of drugs.
Prescriptions remained high in certain areas of New Jersey, however, according to a Centers for Disease Control report released this week.
On a national level, fewer patients received opioids in 2015 than in 2010, and the strength of the average opioid prescription also went down. However, doctors gave out longer prescriptions in 2015 compared to 2010, and the average strength of a prescription was still dangerously high, according to CDC Acting Director Dr. Anne Schuchat.
“The bottom line is, with opioid prescriptions, we are still seeing too many prescriptions given out for too long,” she said.
Enough opioids were prescribed in 2015 to medicate every American around the clock for three weeks, she said.
New Jersey recently passed legislation mandating a five-day initial prescription limit on opioids in an attempt to combat abuse.
These are the counties with the highest amount of opioids prescribed, given in “morphine milligram equivalents,” or MME, which measures the total dosage of opioids while correcting for differing strengths among different drugs.
