…. “Accidental – or unintentional — poisoning by opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers rose by 37 percent during the 7-year study period, while unintentional poisonings by other substances increased by just 21 percent….What’s behind the rise in poisoning by prescription painkillers, sedatives and tranquilizers? “There is not any single cause,” Coben said. “There is increasing availability of powerful prescription drugs in the community and attitudes toward their use tend to be different than attitudes toward using other drugs, especially among young people, who report that prescription drugs are easy to obtain, and they think they are less addictive and less dangerous than street drugs like heroin and cocaine.”
… intentional poisonings – suicide, self-inflicted poisoning, or poisoning someone else — from prescription opioids, sedatives, and tranquilizers more than doubled, from about 10,000 in 1999 to nearly 24,000 in 2006. That compared to just a 53 percent increase in intentional poisonings from other substances.
The biggest percent increase in hospitalizations for poisoning for a specific drug was a quintupling for methadone, according to the team’s report published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. This may be due to the more than 10-fold increase in overall retail sales of this drug from 1997 to 2006, they state.
Poisoning by benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Ativan — drugs that possess sedative, hypnotic, anti-anxiety, anticonvulsant and muscle relaxant activities — rose 39 percent over the study period.
Poisoning by barbiturates, which also have sedative, hypnotic and anti-anxiety actions, actually fell 41 percent, as did hospitalizations for poisoning by antidepressants (a decrease of 13 percent).
Hospitalizations from prescription drug poisonings most often involved women 35 to 54 years old living in urban settings and most of the cases were unintentional, “although the intent of a large number of cases was undetermined,” Coben and colleagues note in their report.” ….
Source: HERE
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