Pharmaceutical opiate drugs top cause of drug deaths in Seattle area
More than half of drug-related deaths in King County last year involved the use of prescription opiate drugs that are most often prescribed for pain control, according to a new report.
Often the drugs are obtained without a prescription.
The annual report was put together by the Community Epidemiology Work Group. a collaboration of public health, drug treatment, law enforcement groups, led by Caleb Banta-Green, Ph.D., a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.
The report, Drug Trends in the Seattle Area, 2008, found that 153 of the 256 people who died due to drug use in the county in 2008 had taken a pharmaceutical opiate, as opposed to street drug like heroin.
That’s more than twice the number of deaths linked to cocaine use over the same period, the next most common cause of drug-related death in King County.
Thirty-nine percent of the deaths involved pharmaceutical opiates were in people over age 50.
The most common opiate drugs involved were methadone, a prescription drug to treat pain and opiate addiction, and oxycodone and hydrocodone, opiate drugs commonly prescribed for pain.
Most of those who died after taking pharmaceutical opiates had also taken other drugs: one in four were using illegal drugs, such as cocaine or heroin; one in three had taken a benzodiazepine, drugs like Valium that are typically prescribed for anxiety.
All told, 84 percent of those who died after taking pharmaceutical opiates had taken other drugs as well.
Cocaine was the second most common cause of drug-related death being involved in 71 cases, the report found. Heroin was involved in 59 of the 256 drug-related deaths.
Methamphetamine use appears to have leveled off, contributing to 13 deaths in 2008, down from a peak of 24 in 2005.
While cocaine deaths declined, cocaine use remains common with cocaine being the drug most commonly identified in emergency rooms or by law enforcement.
To learn more:
- Read the full report which can be found on the UW’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute’s Web page
- View the King County’s listing of local Drug and Alcohol Treatment Programs.
Category: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Drugs & Medicines, Substance Abuse
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
LocalHealthGuide is a health news and information web service for Seattle and the Puget Sound Region. We are independent and unaffiliated with any hospital, medical association or insurer. If you have questions or if your group has an upcoming event that you would like us to cover, please let us know by going to our "
Add to Google
