The United Nations Global Drugs Watchdog stated that the abuse of prescription drug abuse is growing rapidly. There are more people abusing prescription drugs than heroin, cocaine and ecstasy combined.

In the United States an estimated 6.2 million are hooked on prescription drugs. It is now the second most important drug abuse issue nests to cannabis and far more deadly. The director of the International Centre for Drug Policy at St. Georges University in London states that "abuse of such drugs has been spreading over the world in recent years". This director by the name of Hamid Ghodse is concerned with this growing problem and expresses the need for this issue to be tackled urgently. It is difficult to get comprehensive data on pharmaceutical abuse. This is a hidden problem. In Germany, for example, 1.4 to 1.9 million people wren addicted to prescription drugs. That is the reported cases. It could be many more.

One major culprit is the recent increased number of prescription drug addicts on the internet. There are illegal internet pharmacies which sell stolen, averted, and counterfeited medications around the world. There so called pharmacies are a major supply source for drug addicts. The INCB urges governments to monitor them closely or shut them down.