For some context if anyone is curious: to my incredible surprise, the claims in this comment are not obviously made in exaggeration. In particular, many news a

For some context if anyone is curious: to my incredible surprise, the claims in this comment are not obviously made in exaggeration. In particular, many news articles quote the "10 times" claim, eg http://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134143813/the-oxy-express-floridas-drug-abuse-epidemic http://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134143813/the-oxy-express-flor... -- perhaps originating in a claim made by US Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer: "According to recent estimates, Florida prescribes ten times more oxycodone pills than all other states combined." https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/fls/PressReleases/2011/110708-01.html https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/fls/PressReleases/2011/... The claim however does not seem to be true, even in 2010 before Florida took a variety of opioid-related actions. For example, California has approximately twice the population of Florida, but probably no(t much) less than half the oxycodone prescription rate. It was hard to find specific numbers, but for example it appears that at its worst (in 2010) some people claim Florida prescribed 650 million pills per year; at the same time, Pennsylvania definitely prescribed over 200 million pills per year. (Pennsylvania has approximately half the population of Florida.) The closest approximation to the claim that I can find that might have been true is "in 2010, Florida prescribed ten times fewer oxycodone pills than all other states combined". If the factor of ten is exact, then this would still imply that Florida's prescription rate is higher than the other states, as Florida has less than one-tenth of the population of the other states. In any case, it appears that Florida's prescription rate is now around or below the national average.