The New York Times issued a Jan. 22 correction to its Jan. 15 opinion article that incorrectly reported in its subheadline that 46 million U.S. people are on prescription drug Xanax.
In fact, “the medication was prescribed 46.3 million times in the United States in 2010,” and “not to 46 million people,” the correction reads.
Forty-six million people on Xanax in the U.S. would indeed be a stunning number, as that would be about 15% of the U.S. population. According to July 2009 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 307 million people in the U.S.