the level of responsibility that drugs played in a fatal overdose — prevalence and involvement. The involvement of psychotropic drugs in fatal overdoses between 1999 and 2014 more than tripled, yet their prevalence was 28 percent.
Information included on death certificates often didn’t paint a complete picture of the role certain drugs played in fatal overdoses, specifically sedatives, drug cocktails and psychotropic drugs. Ruhm also concluded based on his analysis that heroin-related deaths were “understated” in data gathered from death certificates.
Drug cocktails were responsible for 56 percent of the rise in fatal overdoses between 1999 and 2014. Psychotropic drugs were also more prevalent in recent years, accounting for involvement in 44 percent of fatal overdoses between 2006 and 2014. Combination drug use accounted for 67 percent of the increase in the last seven years of the research period, compared to 46 percent between 1999 and 2006.
Ruhm’s findings shed light on three problematic areas: First, death certificate data does not provide enough information to fully comprehend the extent of the drug poisoning crisis in the U.S.; Second, because drug cocktails are to blame for many fatal overdoses, it’s difficult to assign responsibility to one specific drug category; And finally, different drugs have played more of a role in fatal overdoses at different periods of time.
Ruhm’s research found that a majority of fatal overdoses involved drug cocktails, which need to further be researched to more clearly understand the interactions between the drugs that commonly lead to fatal overdoses.
“The design of effective policies to reduce fatal drug poisonings, therefore, needs to reflect for the important role of drug cocktails,” he concluded.
