ER VISITS TIED TO DRUGS SKYROCKET IN AREA

The St. Louis area has experienced a startling increase in the number of
emergency room visits and deaths linked to drug abuse, according to a
report issued Tuesday.

The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said
that:

Marijuana-related visits to the emergency room here increased 232 percent
from 1995 to 2002, when 2,866 emergency room visits were linked to
marijuana. The numbers reflect a rate that's 2.6 times the national one.
Only Philadelphia and Detroit had higher rates.

Drug abuse killed 298 people in the St. Louis area in 2002, up from 264 in
2001.

Cocaine-related emergency room visits rose 91 percent - from 80 visits per
100,000 people to 153 visits per 100,000 - from 1995 to 2002 in the St.
Louis area. Nationally, the rate increased only 33 percent.

Narcotic pain relievers were the biggest drug killers in the area in 2002.
They sent more than twice as many people to the emergency room that year -
a 101 percent increase - than in the previous year. The national increase
for the same period was 39 percent. The drugs were associated with 123
deaths and 1,560 emergency room visits here.

The agency surveyed medical records from selected hospitals in 21
metropolitan areas nationwide. An analysis of 18 hospitals in the St. Louis
area revealed that drug abuse contributed to 9,641 visits to the emergency
room in 2002. The data are part of a new report titled "Mortality Data from
the Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2002," known as the DAWN report.

The report includes deaths that are directly caused by one or more drugs or
that resulted from long-term drug abuse. The agency counts drug use if the
patient used the substance because of addiction, to achieve psychic effects
or to attempt suicide. It does not include accidental drug overdoses,
adverse reactions to medications, or drug abuse unrelated to the emergency
room visit or death.

The St. Louis area in the report includes St. Louis and St. Louis County,
Franklin, Jefferson and St. Charles counties in Missouri and Clinton,
Monroe and St. Clair counties in Illinois.

Cocaine, benzodiazepines, pain relievers and combination of marijuana and
alcohol with other drugs were the most common drugs cited for emergency
room visits and deaths in the St. Louis area. Many of the fatalities
involved the use of more than one drug. Mixtures of drugs and alcohol led
to 96 deaths, according to the report.

The use of multiple drugs and alcohol comes as no surprise to Dr. Joseph
Primrose, an attending physician in the emergency department at
Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

"If they tell you they're using one (drug), they're invariably using
others," he said.

Drug and alcohol use has become so pervasive that many emergency medical
workers ignore the substances unless their presence could affect patient
care, Primrose said.

"If they come in with a twisted ankle and they've been out partying, unless
they are out of control, we don't even test for drugs," he said. "It's
gotten to the point that we assume multiple drug use until proven otherwise."

It is likely that drugs and alcohol use contribute to many more emergency
room visits than are counted in the report, Primrose said.

Almost 70 percent of the people who went to the emergency room after using
cocaine also used other drugs, the agency reported. Cocaine was involved in
93 drug-related deaths in 2002. A quarter of cocaine-related trips to the
emergency room were attributed to crack.

Marijuana use was reported in 30 percent of all drug abuse-related visits
to the emergency room, usually in combination with other drugs, including
alcohol. Marijuana was involved in 46 deaths.

Young adults often visit emergency rooms in St. Louis after taking "club
drugs," such as methamphetamine ("speed"), PCP, Ecstasy and Ketamine (known
as Special K), Primrose said. The drugs can cause hallucinations or loss of
control. Such drugs were involved in 22 percent more emergency room visits
in 2002 than in 2001 in the St. Louis area but only 8 percent more visits
nationwide.

But it's not just young people at parties that wind up in the emergency
room after taking drugs, Primrose said.

"It's all socioeconomic strata. It's rich. It's poor. It's white. It's
black. It's green. It's yellow. It's everyone," Primrose said. And age is
no barrier either. "We've had people in their 80s in here using drugs."

The full report is available on the Internet at dawninfo.samhsa.gov.