Surgery to remove wisdom teeth puts some teens and young adults on a path to opioid abuse

For older teenagers and young adults, the extraction of wisdom teeth is a painful rite of passage. A new study suggests that it's probably made more perilous by the narcotic pain pills that patients frequently carry home after the common surgical procedure.

The study offers new evidence of how readily - and innocently - a potentially fatal addiction to opioids can take hold. It also shows how important it is that dentists rethink their approach to treating their patients' postoperative discomfort.

In a group of about 15,000 people whose first prescriptions for