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Almost half of drug poisonings are now from abuse of prescription painkillers, researchers note
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
TUESDAY, Dec. 20 (HealthDay News) -- More Americans now die from drug overdoses than in car accidents, according to a new government report released Tuesday.
In 2008, poisoning deaths became the number one cause of accidental deaths in the United States and the leading cause of injury death in 30 states, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ninety percent of these poisonings were linked to drugs, with a surge in deaths from prescription painkiller overdoses reported.
"During the past three decades, the number of drug poisoning deaths has increased sixfold, from about 6,000 deaths in 1980 to over 36,500 in 2008," said report author Margaret Warner, an injury epidemiologist at CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, who added that this trend is only expected to continue.
The authors of the report found a 90 percent increase in poisoning deaths since 1999, while deaths from car accidents have dropped 15 percent in the same period.
By 2008, nine out of every 10 poisoning deaths were due to drugs. In that year, some 77 percent of these deaths were unintentional, 13 percent were suicides and 9 percent were of undetermined intent, according to the report.
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