NCJ Number
235442
Date Published
1996
Length
160 pages
Annotation
This statistical report presents annual data on emergency room drug-abuse related episodes for the year 1993, as obtained from the Drug Abuse Warning Network.
Abstract
Highlights from this report include: in 1993 there were 460,910 drug abuse-related episodes reported in hospital emergency rooms (ERs) involving 796,762 drug mentions; 50 percent of the patients were male, 53 percent were White, 28 percent were Black, and 11 percent were Hispanic; 21 percent of the patients were aged 18 to 25, while 67 percent were aged 26 or older; suicide was the motive for drug use in 39 percent of the emergency room episodes, with 52 percent of the suicides involving a female patient; alcohol-in-combination was the most frequently reported drug in all ER episodes, followed by cocaine, heroin/morphine, and non-narcotic analgesics and marijuana; and the metropolitan areas with the greatest number of drug-related ER episodes were New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago. This report presents annual data on emergency room drug-abuse related episodes and drug mentions that were collected through the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) for the calendar year 1993. Data were obtained from 491 general surgical and medical hospitals with 24-hour ER facilities in 21 metropolitan areas located throughout the coterminous United States. Tables and appendixes