NCJ Number
235439
Date Published
1992
Length
157 pages
Annotation
This statistical report presents annual data on emergency room drug-abuse related episodes for the year 1991, as obtained from the Drug Abuse Warning Network.
Abstract
Highlights from this report include: in 1991 there were 400,079 drug abuse-related episodes reported in hospital emergency rooms (ERs) involving 685,233 drug mentions; 48 percent of the patients were male, 56 percent were White, 27 percent were Black, and 8 percent were Hispanic; 23 percent of the patients were aged 18 to 25, while 64 percent were aged 26 or older; suicide was the motive for drug use in 44 percent of the emergency room episodes, with 57 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 1991. Data were obtained from 502 general surgical and medical hospitals with 24-hour ER facilities in 21 metropolitan areas located throughout the coterminous United States. Tables and appendixes