ABUSE OF MEDS SENDS AS MANY TO ER AS ILLEGAL DRUGS

ATLANTA -- For the first time, abuse of painkillers and other
medication is sending as many people to the emergency room as the use
of illegal drugs.

In 2008, ERS saw an estimated 1 million visits from people abusing
prescription or over-the-counter medicines - mostly painkillers and
sedatives. That was about the same number of visits from those
overdosing on heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs, according to a
government report released Thursday.

Only five years earlier, illegal drug visits outnumbered those from
legal medications by a 2-to-1 margin.

In other words, the number of ER visits from medication abuse doubled,
said Peter Delany of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration.

"It's a pretty startling jump," Delany said. He led a team that worked
with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the report.

Painkillers and sedatives clearly drove the trend. ER visits for the
painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone more than doubled from 2004 to
2008. And cases from one kind of tranquilizer nearly doubled.

The estimates are based on emergency room data from more than 200 U.S.
hospitals. Many of the cases may be overdoses, but some may come from
mixing drugs or combining them with alcohol, Delany said.

Health officials are not sure why painkiller abuse rose so
dramatically. But the number of prescriptions has been increasing, so
some of those who ended up in ERs may have gotten their medicine legally.

The authors did not estimate how many of the ER patients died. A CDC
report last year found that the rate of drug-related deaths roughly
doubled from the late 1990s to 2006, and most of the increase was
attributed to prescription opiates such as the painkillers methadone,
Oxycontin and Vicodin.

"The abuse of prescription drugs is our nation's fastest-growing drug
problem," Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, said in a statement.

The use of painkillers has grown in recent years as doctors tried to
correct the traditional undertreatment of pain, and pharmaceutical
companies ramped up marketing of new pain medications.

But many doctors and patients don't fully recognize the medications'
dangers, said Susan Foster, a vice president at Columbia University's
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.

"People believe they're safer because they're prescribed by doctors
and approved by the FDA," she said.

The report is being published this week in a CDC publication,
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.