The State - News from Feb. 1, 1987

Guns have overtaken poison as the preferred means of suicide in California, accounting for more than half of all such deaths, the state Department of Health Services said. The comparison is based on a recently completed analysis of suicide rates through 1984, the last year for which the department has complete statistics, Director Ken Kizer said. He said poisoning accounted for a dominant 45.6% of all suicides in the state in 1970, but by 1984 had declined to 21.2%. Gun-related deaths, meanwhile, rose from 35.4% in 1970 to 52.5% of all suicides in 1984.