The investigation into actor Heath Ledger’s death Monday as a possible drug overdose is bringing attention to a nationwide health crisis: A dramatic rise in overdose fatalities in the United States since 1999, driven largely by prescription drugs.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unintentional poisoning deaths — 95 percent of which involve drug overdoses — increased from 12,186 in 1999 to 20,950 in 2004.
During that time, prescription drugs overtook cocaine and heroin combined as the leading cause of lethal overdoses, said Dr. Len Paulozzi, a CDC injury prevention expert.
Overdose deaths have been increasing since the early 1990s. But the recent rise has been so dramatic that it is driving the first sustained increase in 25 years in the nation’s overall injury death rate, Paulozzi reported in a study published in December. Drug treatment experts doubt that most people realize the seriousness of the prescription-abuse problem.
“Because (they aren’t) a street drug, people think (they don’t) have the same risk,” said John Walters, director of the White House Office of Federal Drug Control Policy.
He unveiled an advertising campaign Thursday that will target prescription-drug abuse by teenagers. The first television ad will run during the Super Bowl.
The campaign was set to be announced Wednesday, but, not wanting to appear opportunistic, the agency postponed the announcement by a day after Ledger was found dead in his New York apartment.
Sleeping pills and other prescription drugs, including antidepressants, were found in Ledger’s apartment, according to a police spokesman on the scene. But an autopsy was inconclusive, and toxicology tests are pending.
The great majority of overdose deaths are from opioid pain killers such as oxycodone, fentanyl and methadone (in pill form rather than the liquid dispensed for recovering heroin addicts), which control pain but also reduce respiratory function. Too high a dose, when not increased gradually under careful supervision, can shut down breathing entirely.
However, unintentional poisoning deaths involving other psycho-therapeutic drugs, including sleeping pills, antidepressants and tranquilizers, grew 84 percent from 1999 to 2004, according to the CDC study.
Headline-grabbing overdose deaths such as that of Anna Nicole Smith are the tip of the iceberg, experts say.
From 1992 to 2003, the number of Americans who admitted to using prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons almost doubled, from 7.8 million to 15.1 million, and abuse among teenagers more than tripled, according to a survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at New York’s Columbia University.
Prescription drug sales themselves have soared — up nearly 500 percent since 1990.
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