Americans take about 80 percent of the total number of opiates produced in the entire world.

Americans’ abuse of prescription painkillers has reached epidemic proportions, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates that 15,000 people die every year in this country from overdoses involving opioid or narcotic pain relievers.

While men are more likely to die from painkiller abuse, the number of deaths among women was up 400 percent between 1999 and 2010. “More women are dying at rates that we have never seen before,” said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden. “Stopping this epidemic in women — and men — is everyone’s business.”

So what’s driving this alarming trend, and what can be done to stop it without denying relief to people who need pain medicine?

James McGowan, MD, who specializes in advanced pain treatment options at The Center for Interventional Pain Medicine at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, believes the problem arose from a concern that chronic pain was being undertreated.