Drug-Related Emergency Room Visits Decline

Drug-related visits to hospital emergency rooms dropped sharply last year, but the decline slowed markedly in the last half of the year, Bob Martinez, director of the White House war on drugs, said Tuesday.

He called the assessment “a good news, bad news” report.

“We’re getting close to bedrock”--the addicted population--as casual drug use declines, Martinez said in announcing the Drug Abuse Warning Network survey of hospital emergency rooms conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

He cited earlier statements by federal drug authorities that as “we get down to the more frequent users, the addicted population, the work would be harder.”

The 365,708 drug-related emergency room “episodes” in 1990 dropped 14.2% from the 426,060 recorded by the survey the previous year. The sharpest drops over the two-year period took place in the final quarter of 1989, when estimated emergency room visits tied to drugs dropped by more than 12,000 to 95,089, and the second quarter of 1990, when the total dipped by nearly 4,000 to 91,752.

In last year’s third quarter, the drop slowed to only 1,000, and the final quarter showed a 2,600 decline.

The annual emergency room visits involving drugs in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area dropped at nearly two times the national rate--28% from 24,580 in 1989 to 17,630 last year, while in San Diego the estimated totals actually increased slightly--from 5,113 in 1989 to 5,168 in 1990. Federal officials could offer no reasons for the variations.

The national estimates were based on a representative sample of about 500 emergency rooms that officials of the drug abuse institute said reflect more than 5,200 hospital emergency rooms across the nation. The slowdown in the decline was particularly notable with cocaine, the most frequently mentioned illicit drug in the survey, and heroin. Mentions of cocaine in emergency room situations dropped 14.8% in the first half of 1990, but remained essentially unchanged in the final half. Heroin dropped 19.7% in the first six months, but only 6.6% in the final half of 1990, the survey reported.

Marijuana actually rose as a factor in emergency room situations in the last quarter of 1990--to 3,494 in the last three months of 1990 from 2,928 in the third quarter of the year. Martinez and other authorities said that they could not explain the increase.

Martinez dismissed questioning of the survey data by such critics as Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics, who contend that overworked emergency room personnel often list drug-related situations as strokes or other maladies, without referring to drug use that brought about the condition.

“The medical profession is statistic-oriented as well,” Martinez said. “They know it is important to keep track of episodes” for research and the expansion of health care facilities.

Martinez used the survey data to reiterate criticism of recent House action reducing the Administration’s funding requests for drug programs by $387 million.

He said the data is the first indication that progress in combating drugs “may at times be slower and more uneven than in the past.”