MOST OVERDOSES ON LEGAL DRUGS

Up to 10,000 patients a year are being treated in Victorian hospitals
for drug overdoses, new statistics show.

And most have overdosed on prescription or legal drugs, including
tranquillisers, anti-depressants and analgesics.

Medical authorities believe the number of overdoses is rising steadily
and that this is further proof of the community's overdependence on
drugs.

The statistics, prepared for The Age by the Victorian Injury
Surveillance System at Monash University Accident Research Centre,
leading public hospitals and the Metropolitan Ambulance Service,
provide a rare insight into the misuse of drugs in the wider community.

One of Australia's leading drug researchers, Dr Nick Crofts, said the
research indicated that Australians were an increasingly
drug-dependent society, frequently resorting to unnecessary use or
overuse of drugs in a variety of circumstances - from curing minor
ills to illicit drug dependence and suicide attempts.

``It's a drug-oriented, drug-using society. It's artificial to
separate out heroin and the other illicit drugs as abnormal human
behavior when we look to drugs to solve everything,'' Dr Crofts said.

And a leading emergency doctor in Melbourne, Dr Joseph Epstein, said
that the number of people treated for drug overdoses in casualty
departments appeared to be increasing.

Dr Epstein, the clinical director of emergency medicine at the Western
Hospital and a board member of the Melbourne Ambulance Service, said:
``Every indicator that we are able to identify points to a significant
growth in the number of drug overdoses presenting to emergency
departments.''

There were one million to 1.1million emergency department attendances
in Victoria each year and it was believed that slightly more than 1per
cent were because of overdoses, Dr Epstein said.

The new statistics show that:

* Overdoses attended by Melbourne ambulances have leapt by at least
36per cent from 1997 to 1998.

* Many victims take a cocktail of drugs.

* About 40 per cent of overdose patients are aged 15 to
29.

* More females suffer drug overdoses than males, but more males
overdose on heroin.

The hospital research cannot clearly separate how many of the
overdoses are suicide attempts or unintentional overdoses or
recreational drug abuse.

And while it is also unable to establish the exact proportion of
overdoses through legal or illegal drugs, doctors said the majority
were people who fell victim to prescription or legal drugs.

Doctors said the number of victims suffering overdoses was higher than
the hospital statistics indicated because hundreds of victims were not
brought to hospitals.

Many victims were often treated at the scene by ambulance officers, a
small number were treated by general practitioners and others survived
overdoses and chose not to seek medical care, they said.

The figures emerge days after police disclosed that in the first week
of the year heroin overdoses took two lives a day in Melbourne.

Drug squad police announced at the time that they and members of the
coroner's office were investigating 25 fatal heroin overdoses to try
to ascertain the personal circumstances of the victims.

They want to know, among other things, how and why the victims
developed a drug habit and whether factors in their early lives pushed
them towards drugs.

Doctors said yesterday they were concerned about the increasing number
of occasional heroin-users they were treating as well as a growing
number of people injured in car accidents after overdoses.

Dr Stuart Dilley, an emergency physician at St Vincent's Hospital,
said it was crucial that overdose victims received medical attention

as quickly as possible.

``Quite a number of them are just getting dropped off in the ambulance
bay by their mates. They scream up the road, land in the ambulance
bay, call for help and you are dragging this blue guy or girl out the
back of the car who is not breathing,'' Dr Dilley said. `` ... Some of
them have been unconscious for too long and have suffered brain damage.''

Dr Epstein said that society should consider mounting a similar effort
against the drug death toll as it had against the road toll.

Professor Joan Ozanne-Smith, the director of the Victorian Injury
Surveillance System, said recording and monitoring hospital treatments
for drug overdoses was essential. ``They can help us by identifying
problems that need to be targeted. They can be used to look
geographically at where some of the major problems are,'' she said.

Overdosing

* Up to 10,000 are treated in hospital each year for
overdoses.

* The number of overdose victims treated by ambulance crews has been
steadily rising for two years.

* Most overdoses involve prescription drugs.

Source: Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre.