NCJ Number
199406
Date Published
December 2002
Length
472 pages
Annotation
This document offers preliminary reports on emergency department visits that were induced by or related to substance abuse between the period January and June 2002.
Abstract
Comparisons are made to data gathered between the same time period during 2001. Data were gathered by the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), which samples hospitals in 21 metropolitan areas to gather data involving emergency room (ER) visits involving substance abuse. The preliminary data reveal that from January through June 2002, there were 308,558 drug-related ER visits in the coterminous United States. This level stayed relatively stable from January through June 2001 to January through June 2002. As far as type of illicit drug, there were no significant differences between the two time periods in mentions of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, amphetamines, methamphetamines, MDMA, Ketamine, PCP, GHB, or inhalants. However, mentions of the drug LSD decreased 78 percent from the first half of 2001 to the first half of 2002. Patient demographics for 2002 indicated that heroin use declined 18 percent from 2001 among Black patients and use of LSD declined across most demographic subgroups, including gender, race, and age. Additionally, the data indicates that more than 50 percent of the ER visits in 2002 involved multiple drugs, 40 percent involve overdoses, and 18 percent involved unexpected reactions to the drug. Approximately half of patients (49 percent) were admitted to the hospital while the other half (48 percent) were treated and released. The remainder of the preliminary data concern statistics on the individual types of drugs, including alcohol when used in combination with other drugs, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, amphetamines, and methamphetamine, and other substances such as antidepressants and sedatives. The data on cocaine indicate that there were 91,687 ER visits involving cocaine during the first half of 2002. This is compared to 42,571 ER visits involving heroin, 55,727 ER visits involving marijuana, 10,079 ER visits involving amphetamines, and 6,136 ER visits involving methamphetamine during the same time period. Also contained in this document are the final estimates of drug-related ER visits for the full years of 1994 through 2001, which have been previously published under separate cover.