In 16 states, drug deaths overtake traffic fatals

[WinterDave]

In 16 states, drug deaths overtake traffic fatals

By MIKE STOBBE (AP) – 1 day ago

ATLANTA — "In 16 states and counting, drugs now kill more people than auto accidents do, the government said Wednesday.

Experts said the startling shift reflects two opposite trends: Driving is becoming safer, and the legal and illegal use of powerful prescription painkillers is on the rise.

For decades, traffic accidents have been the biggest cause of injury-related death in the U.S., and they are still No. 1. But drug overdoses are pulling ahead in one state after another.

"People see a car accident as something that might happen to them," said Margaret Warner, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But as for death from a drug overdose, "maybe they see it as something that's not going happen to them."

The drug-related death rate roughly doubled from the late 1990s to 2006, according to the most recent CDC data.

The number of states in which drug-related deaths have overtaken traffic fatalities has gone from eight in 2003 to 12 in 2005, and 16 in 2006. They are: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

It's not clear why those states have seen such a shift, but experts said certain drugs may be more of a problem in some states than in others.

While cocaine and heroin continue to be significant killers, most of the increase is attributed to prescription opiates such as the painkillers methadone, Oxycontin and Vicodin.

From 1999 to 2006, death rates for such medications climbed for every age group. Deaths from methadone alone increased sevenfold, according to the CDC.

It's not all black market stuff, either.

About half of the opiate medication deaths in King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, involved people who got their drugs through legal prescriptions, said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of Washington research scientist.

"There has been a dramatic change in how doctors prescribe opiates," Banta-Green said.

In the 1990s, he said, doctors began recognizing that chronic pain was undertreated. The prescribing of painkillers escalated after that. Today, about one in five U.S. adults and one in 10 adolescents are prescribed an opiate each year, he said.

"The pendulum swung in the other direction," he said.

Using death certificate data, CDC researchers counted more than 45,000 U.S. deaths nationwide from traffic accidents in 2006, and about 39,000 from drug-induced causes.

About 90 percent of those drug fatalities are sudden deaths from overdoses, but the count includes people who died from organ damage from long-term drug use or abuse.

In Massachusetts, there were more than 1,000 drug-related deaths in 2006, double the number of traffic deaths, according to the CDC. Michigan had about 500 more drug deaths than vehicle fatalities, and New York had 350 more.

Nationally, the death rate from traffic accidents fell by about 6.5 percent from 1999 through 2006 — from 15.3 deaths per 100,000 people to 14.3 per 100,000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The decline in road fatalities is "considered one of the great public health triumphs" of the past few decades, the CDC's Warner said."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...fI_6gD9B1TECG3

[Dempsey]

Just seems like hysteria to me. Trying to get people against drug use (even prescription stuff) for some reason.

[stylicho]

Originally Posted by Dempsey

Just seems like hysteria to me. Trying to get people against drug use (even prescription stuff) for some reason.

Yep, doesn't have anything to do with facts.

[ivankaramazov]

This article sucks. I'm not really sure where the numbers are coming from. Hundreds of thousands of people die from prescription medication complications each year, about ten thousand die from illegal drugs. They must be establishing some line where on one side people are trying to get high, which seems like it would be difficult to do.

[WinterDave]

Drug Poisoning Causes More Deaths Than Traffic Accidents

"Poisoning deaths involving methadone in the US have increased nearly sevenfold in less than a decade, according to a new report from the Centers For Disease Control And Prevention.

In the CDC’s report on fatal poisonings, researchers noted that poisoning is the second leading cause of injury related death, and the leading cause of injury death among people aged 35-54.

In the 35-54 age group, poisoning resulted in more deaths than both firearms and motor-vehicle injuries, according to the report.

The study found that from 1999 through 2006, the number of fatal poisonings involving opioid analgesics (methadone, Oxycontin and Vicodin) more than tripled from 4,000 to 13,800 deaths. What’s more, opioid analgesics were involved in nearly 40 percent of all poisoning deaths in 2006 alone, compared to about 20 percent in 1999.

Researchers said that drug poisonings make up the largest percentage of overall poisoning deaths in the US.

They noted that death records for about one-fifth of poisoning deaths was due to drugs, although the reports did not identify which substance was to blame.

In some states, drug poisoning has replaced car accidents as the No. 1 cause of injury related death.

"People see a car accident as something that might happen to them," Margaret Warner of the CDC told the Associated Press. However, when they think of drug overdoses, "maybe they see it as something that's not going happen to them."

Drug related deaths have become stronger than traffic accidents in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, according to the report."

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/...ic_accidents/#

[UltraShy]

They makes drugs look more dangerous because driving is vastly safer today than it was years ago.

There was a time when many people did not wear seat belts. Today, seat belt use is legally mandated in most, if not all, states. There was a time when no cars had airbags. For a decade plus they've had dual front air bags at a minimum. Many better cars have side impact airbags as well. Virtually any car has anti-lock now so you still have steering control while getting the fastest possible stop. High-end cars now come with electronic stability control systems even. Drunk driving has been redefined from .10 to .08 -- now making one too intoxicated to legally drive at a level 20% lower.

When you consider the above, it's not hard to see why traffic deaths are down.

I first heard this drugs-cause-more-death-than-cars story on the news last night. It made me furious. People suffer in pain because they can't get the drugs they actually need. I've seen in my own family how hard those with pain have to work to pry an opioid script from a doctor's iron fist. Such stories just fuel the anti-drug hysteria and hurt innocent victims of pain who get treated like junkies.

For a very long time opioid pain killers were severely under-prescribed. Over the last decade+ opioid prescriptions have become more common as the medical community has realized their error of telling people with serious pain "Just take Tylenol," the kind of comment that makes a patient in pain want to put his doc who'd say that in some serious pain of his own.

The media helped this along with their endless stories on "Hillbilly Heroin" a decade ago. Odd how they report on how Oxy is some super drug for getting high and then the next day a pharmacy is robbed of that same drug. It's almost as if a junkie watched the news!