Sharing prescription painkillers is a felony. And it could lead to addiction or an overdose.
Yet a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine finds one in five people who is prescribed narcotic painkillers share them with someone else.
The vast majority of those who shared their drugs said they did so to help the other person manage their pain.
Nathan Painter, associate clinical professor of health sciences at UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy, said sharing drugs like Oxycontin or Vicodin is risky.
“As benevolent as it seems, helping somebody out by giving them a couple of pills — I think it's been demonstrated that that is only contributing to the problem," Painter said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 14,000 Americans died from an overdose of prescription painkillers in 2014.
