Drug deaths on the rise

U.S. health authorities point to drug overdoses as a rising cause of accidental death.

Most people, if asked what the No. 1 cause of accidental deaths in America is, probably would guess traffic accidents. And they would be right; traffic accidents still are the biggest cause of injury-related death in the U.S.

But in 16 states, drugs kill more people than auto accidents do, according to a report issued last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The drug-related death rate roughly doubled from the late 1990s to 2006.

Officials note that one reason for this startling phenomenon is the conjunction of two trends: Cars are getting safer, and the legal and illegal use of powerful prescription painkillers is on the rise.

Illegal street drugs always have claimed a certain percentage of overdose victims. But authorities say the recent increase in overdoses of prescription drugs has caused a spike in deaths.

In some cases, overdoses result from recreational use of prescription drugs. In other cases, the overdose is accidental on the part of patients who receive the drugs legally.

In either case, this trend might come as a shock to many. When we thought of overdoses in the past, we usually conjured up images of street-corner dealers and helpless addicts.

Now, we're seeing the home medicine cabinet as the source of the problem.

Officials say certain drugs might be more of a problem in some states than in others. The abuse of the painkiller Oxycontin, for example, is prevalent in Appalachia.

What's clear is that the nation needs to focus as much on the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs as on the abuse of illegal drugs.