Pills deaths spike in US town

Residents in the small US town of Portsmouth, Ohio, are living in a world of pain, and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it.

Fatal overdoses of prescription drugs have now overtaken car crashes as the leading cause of death in Scioto County – where street clinics known as ‘Pill Mills’ dole out the highly addictive opiate Oxycontin to anyone with the money to pay for it.

City officials are taking steps to close some outlets but others remain operating on the edge of the law where some are cashing in on the big business of numbing the reality of life.

Al Jazeera’s John Terrett reports from Portsmouth, Ohio.