Seven Most Medicated States: All Southern

The health care information company SDI takes information from pharmacies to determine the states that took the most prescription medication in 2009. Forbes magazine used that data to determine America’s most medicated states.

I’ll save you the trouble of clicking through that slideshow: the top seven are all from the South. We’re not one of them, though: the list goes West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, South Carolina and Mississippi.

The other three include two states from the Midwest and Vermont.

There’s no coincidence here: all of these states combine large areas of poverty. This results in higher rates of certain diseases. It’s why we need public investment in programs like preventative health care for children and education to spur economic growth. Like they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.