NEW YORK - Sales of prescription painkillers are exploding in new areas, and experts are worried that's creating a wave of addiction.
Pharmacies, hospitals and physicians dispensed the equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone in 2010. That's enough to give 40 5-mg Percocets and 24 5-mg Vicodins to every man, woman and child in the United States.
An analysis by The Associated Press shows distribution of the two drugs is booming from New York's Staten Island to Santa Fe., N.M. Some places saw effective per-capita sales increase sixteenfold between 2000 and 2010. 
Oxycodone is the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet and Percodan. Hydrocodone is in Vicodin, Lortab and Norco.

Sue Ogrocki, File | AP Photo - FILE- In this Aug. 5, 2010, file photo, a pharmacy tech poses for a picture with hydrocodone bitartrate and acetaminophen tablets, the generic version of Vicodin, at Oklahoma Hospital Discount Pharmacy in Edmond, Okla. Sales of the nation’s two most popular prescription painkillers have exploded in new parts of the country, an Associated Press analysis shows, worrying experts who say the push to relieve patients’ suffering is spawning an addiction epidemic. From New York’s Staten Island to Santa Fe, N.M., Drug Enforcement Administration figures show dramatic rises between 2000 and 2010 in the distribution of oxycodone, the key ingredient in OxyContin, Percocet and Percodan.

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