According to testimony by the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP), Americans consume 80 percent of the world's supply of opiate painkillers such as Percocet and Vicodin.

The Daily Mail is reporting that the ASIPP testimony is drawing attention to the nationwide drug abuse epidemic in the U.S. where pain pill prescriptions have surged 600 percent in the last ten years.

This equates to more than 110 tons of highly addictive opiates and is enough medication to supply every single man, woman and child in America with 64 Percocet or Vicodin pills.

The ready availability of these drugs has sparked a national epidemic of pain pill abuse that leads to 14,800 deaths a year - higher than from heroin and cocaine combined.

The crisis has also sparked an upsurge in drug related crime. Police are reporting increases in robberies and other crimes by people addicted to the key ingredients in most pain killers - oxycodone and hydrocodone.

Howard Levine, a pharmacist in Long Island, told the BBC he was forced to stop carrying the drugs after being robbed twice by addicts in search of a high.

Levine summed up the core of the problem very succinctly when he said: "We've become a society of wusses."

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