Report: Drugs More Lethal Than Car Crashes

Government Agency Finds New Trend in Data From 16 States

(AP)  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.

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On the Net:

Centers for Disease Control report: http://www.cdc.gov/NCHS

[noloyalisti]

This is what happens when you let big corporations take over EVERYTHING. They write their own rules, write government policy and they COULD NOT CARE LESS WHO LIVES OR DIES. Time to take it down and take it back.

[MPHgrad]

This surprises whom?

[Galactic Cannibal]

One more thing CBS , ABC etc TV news broadcasts are quickly going the way of the dinasours. Katiecouric make the most of your outrageous $13 million yr. salary while you can.

[Galactic Cannibal]

Our country has its priorities ass backward. There is no record of death by overdose from Cannibas, yet if you stand on a street corner and smoke a joint . You will be arrested and jailed . At the same time you can swallow fist fulls of drugs over the counter that will kill you. We cannot give all Americans health insurance but we can borrow almost $1 trillion dollars from communist CHINA to attack IRAQ. A country who did not attack the US.Like I said we have our priorities ass backward and we have become a nation of hypocrites.

[dragon8me]

This is just another bogas study because the government wants to ban something else. Or raise taxes on it like ciggerettees because "there bad for you". This is America. Leave my drugs alone. If someone wants to kill themselves good riddens. What bussiness is it of someone else. Next thing you know they'll want to ban MP3 players because they make people go deaf. Or Playboy because makes you go blind.

[kenhamlett]

I think Oprah, Dr. Oz, those other four tv doctors, And the FDA should get busy on this one. While the drug activity is well known the high volumes of deaths surprise even me. This is ridiculous.

[Mokkie57]

The secret meeting where Pres Obama gave big drug companies 80 BILLION DOLLARS Should of covered this up. One big fact everyone ignores is 0 deaths from Marijuana overdose.
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dragon8me]

Mokkie57 Is right. Zero deaths from cannabis. I wish I could trade in my pain pills for Med cannabis. But not in this state. It is such a hassle to get my meds and they only help so much, then you have to raise the dosage after a while till what you need to help with the pain is enough to kill someone not used to it. What some people don't realize is if they can't afford them and don't have them for a while and continue on latter with the dose they were taking it could be lethal. That's why you have to take them exactly like prescribed. And some think because a doctor prescribes them they can't overdose. 'Corse they probably have an IQ of 5. In my situation cannabis might not be strong enough on it's own but I could cut way down it it were legal, and most people could get all the pain relief they need from it. Shouldn't we have the choice of a safer pain killer, excuse me, reliever? Key word being choice.

[sjc_1]

Not to get off topic, but I can remember when traffic deaths were around 25-30,000 per year back when we had a 55 mph speed limit. Now they are up to 45,000 deaths per year on the highway and 6000 of those are due to texting. This is NOT a good trend.

[doc_holliday76]

With all the blatant drug advertisements by BIG PHARMA, it is no surprise that 100,000 Americans die due to abuse of prescription drugs every year -- far more than from illegal drugs that our failed WAR on Drugs has been unable to stop!

[stuart-johns1]

I don't know where they get their information from and I'm not saying the writer of this article is wrong, but I would swear Florida and many southern states would and should be on that list too.

We have major problems in the south with this abuse.

[stuart-johns1]

This is really gone make Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck unhappy. I'll bet their scrambling for a stockpile as we speak!