Annual Emergency Department Data 1994: Data From the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN)

• NCJ Number: 235443
• Author(s): Frederick Stinson; Richard Gruberg; Barbara Glancy; Shawkat Hassan
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 160 pages
• Contract Number(s): 283-93-0004
• Sponsoring Agency: SAMHSA, Office of Applied Studies
• Corporate Author: CSR Incorporated
• Sale Source: SAMHSA's National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Drug Abuse Warning Network Series l, Number 14-A

Annotation

This statistical report presents annual data on emergency room drug-abuse related episodes for the year 1994, as obtained from the Drug Abuse Warning Network.

Abstract

Highlights from this report include: in 1994 there were 518,521 drug abuse-related episodes reported in hospital emergency rooms (ERs) involving 900,317 drug mentions; 51 percent of the patients were male, 54 percent were White, 27 percent were Black, and 10 percent were Hispanic; 22 percent of the patients were aged 18 to 25, while 66 percent were aged 26 or older; suicide was the motive for drug use in 39 percent of the emergency room episodes, with 53 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, marijuana/hashish, and non-narcotic analgesics; and the metropolitan areas with the greatest number of drug-related ER episodes were New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Detroit. 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 1994. Data were obtained from 488 general surgical and medical hospitals with 24-hour ER facilities in 21 metropolitan areas located throughout the coterminous United States. Tables and appendixes