Maine leads the nation in the rate of prescribing long-acting/extended release opioid pain relievers, and it ranks 11th nationally in the prescription rate for high-dose opioid drugs. Toggle among the four types of medication at right to see the top states in each category. The figures revealed on mouse-over give the state’s rank in that category, and the number of prescriptions written for every 100 people. This data was drawn from IMS Health’s National Prescription Audit, a commercial database built on a sample from 57,000 pharmacies, which dispense 80 percent of the retail prescriptions in the United States.

INTERACTIVE: T.E.D. Andrick