Drug overdoses on the rise in most age groups

More and more people are dying from abusing or misusing drugs, including both prescription and illegal drugs, new research suggests.

In some groups, deaths from "accidental poisonings" - most the result of drug overdoses - are more than ten times higher than they were in the late 1960s, the study found.

While the notoriously drug-loving baby boomers account for part of the recent increase as they age and embrace prescription medications, death from accidental poisoning is higher across almost all age groups than it was a few decades ago, especially among white Americans. And the upward trend doesn't appear to be leveling off.

"I went in expecting to see a blip (in increased accidental poisonings) with the baby boomer(s)," Dr. Richard Miech, the study's lead author and head of Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver, told Reuters Health. After all, he said, "you've seen pictures of Woodstock."

Miech was surprised that the boomer generation's impact on the death rates was overshadowed by a "huge increase" in accidental poisoning deaths overall - an increase he attributes to the growing number of prescription drugs being taken in the United States by all age groups.

Miech and his colleagues analyzed data from the U.S. Census, which counts all people in the country, as well a register that tracks the number of deaths from different causes every year. Putting them together, the researchers could calculate the percentage of people of different ages and races dying from accidental poisonings annually.

Overall, white men and women were more than nine times as likely to die from an accidental poisoning in 2005 through 2007 than they were in 1968 and 1969 according to the analysis, which is published in the journal Addiction. Black men and women were about three times more likely to die from the same cause in recent years than they were 40 years ago.

Because of changes in the body or changes in drug use, the greatest proportion of overdoses happen in people in their 40's and 50's - and that age group, which currently includes the tail-end of the baby boom generation, is where some of the biggest changes in poisoning rates over time showed up.

In 1968, for example, about one in every 100,000 white women in their early 50's died from accidental poisoning. In 2007, 15 out of 100,000 did so. Among black women of the same age, accidental poisoning deaths during the same timeframes increased from about two people in 100,000 to almost 17 in 100,000. Both white and black men had even larger jumps.

While the increases weren't quite as striking in younger adults, the study found that deaths from accidental poisonings are significantly higher for almost every age group. That trend that was particularly clear among white Americans.

Although the authors couldn't tell what drugs were responsible for the most accidental poisonings, the majority of prescription drug abuse involves painkillers, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Vicodin (containing acetaminophen and the opiate drug hydrocodone) is the most commonly abused prescription drug in the U.S.