Drug Overdosing

The untimely death of Anna Nicole Smith has raised suspicion a drug overdose was to blame.

Interestingly, on the day of her death, a new report by the Centers for Disease Control is out on drug overdosing. It finds: unintentional drug poisoning death rates increased substantially in the United States during 1999--2004 and the trend can be attributed primarily to increasing numbers of deaths associated with prescription opioid analgesics (e.g., oxycodone) and secondarily to increasing numbers of overdoses of cocaine and prescription psychotherapeutic drugs (e.g., sedatives), and cannot be attributed to heroin, methamphetamines, or other illegal drugs (3,5).

The mortality increases might be the result of greater use and abuse of potentially lethal prescription drugs in recent years, behaviors that are more common among whites than nonwhites (6,7). The substantial increase in deaths among persons aged 15--24 years is consistent with substantial recent increases in recreational prescription drug and cocaine use among adolescents and young adults (8).