STUDY SAYS DRUGS CAUSE MOST POISONING DEATHS

WASHINGTON -- Drugs now account for 80 percent of the poisoning deaths
nationwide, according to a new federal study, and are the leading cause of
injury death for people aged 35-44.

The report released today by researchers from the National Center for
Health Statistics examined the underlying causes of death for 18,549
poisonings as reported on death certificates in 1995, the latest year for
which such data are available.

"Opiates and cocaine were two of the leading causes of drug-related
poisoning deaths," said Lois Fingerhut, primary author of the study, which
was published in the May-June issue of Public Health Reports.

More than three-quarters of all poisoning deaths, 77 percent, were caused
by drugs, with the remaining 15 percent from "gases or vapors" or "other
solid and liquid substances, including alcohol," or 8 percent.

Poisoning death rates were relatively low among children under age
15,(fewer than 0.5 per 100,000) and peaked among the middle aged group,
35-44, at 15.9 per 100,000, a rate higher than that from either motor
vehicle or firearm injuries.

>From 1990 to 1995, the age-adjusted rate of death from poisoning increased
25 percent, with all of the increase associated with drugs.

Between 1985 and 1995, poisoning death rates for men aged 35-54 nearly
doubled to 20.4 per 100,000 and the drug-related poisoning death rate for
males ages 35-54 years nearly tripled, reaching 16.1 per 100,000.

And from 1990 to 1995, death rates associated with opiates and cocaine more
than doubled among men aged 35-54, according to Fingerhut.

New Mexico was one of six states with disproportionately high percentage of
poisoning deaths attributed to opiates, 22 percent, versus a national
average of 11 percent.

Sixteen other states, mainly in the West and Northeast, also had
age-adjusted poisoning death rates significantly higher than the U.S.
average, while states with rates lower than the average generally had lower
proportions of poisoning deaths attributed to drugs.