Illnesses Tied to Cocaine at Record High, Study Says

Emergency room admissions for cocaine abuse, which briefly showed a decline, have soared to record highs in Los Angeles and other parts of California in the 1990s, apparently the result of increased availability of the drug, a study being released today reports.

Between 1990 and 1994, hospital admissions for cocaine abuse in Los Angeles County jumped 91%, with even higher increases in some other California counties, according to the study by the nonprofit Public Statistics Institute of Irvine.

San Diego, Alameda, and rural Northern California counties showed increases well above 100% during the same four-year period.

In Orange County, however, the rise in emergency room admissions was only 13% over the same four-year period. James Cunningham, principal author of the report, cites two factors for the moderate rise in emergency room admissions in local hospitals.

Statistics show African Americans use cocaine at a higher rate than whites, and lower admission numbers merely reflect that African Americans constitute a small percentage of the county’s population, said Cunningham. Also, whites seem to have “migrated” away from cocaine to another drug--methamphetamine, he added. The increase in cocaine-related hospital admissions continues a rise that began during the 1980s but appeared to decline in 1990.

“We’d hoped that the drop in admissions during 1990 signaled the end of the state’s cocaine epidemic,” Cunningham said. “Instead, it was just a pause.”

The dip in 1990 probably was the result of tougher policies by the federal government regulating the chemicals used in production of the drug, the study said. The tougher policies were enacted in 1988 and produced a decline in the availability of cocaine, as well as an increase in its price, between 1989 and 1991, the researchers noted.

But the drop was temporary, the study said, “because drug producers soon replenished their supplies by increasing purchases of cocaine processing chemicals from Europe.”

Statewide, 13,496 patients were admitted to hospitals for cocaine-related health problems--such as seizures, brain hemorrhages and cardiac arrest--in 1994. Admissions for cocaine-related problems rose 79% between 1990 and 1994, and were up 266% since 1985, when the data began being collected.

The hospitalizations cost $178 million during 1994, experts say.

Researchers also found that the rise in cocaine-related hospitalizations was “particularly pronounced” among African Americans and Latinos, whose admissions rose 116% and 115% respectively between 1990 and 1994. Admissions among whites rose 36% during the same period.

One explanation for this, the researchers said, is that many white drug abusers in California now are using methamphetamine, a stimulant like cocaine.

Although there has been an increase in the amount of cocaine consumed, the number of users in California appears to have gone down since the 1980s, researchers said. The rise in emergency hospitalizations for a roughly static population suggests that heavy users are consuming more cocaine or the drug’s price is encouraging consumption in larger quantities.

The study only counted hospital admissions, and not persons who were treated and then released for cocaine-related problems or those who may have used cocaine but avoided detection.

As a result, researchers said the study represents only “the tip of an iceberg” of the cocaine problem.

Men were hospitalized at a rate twice that of women. Nearly half those hospitalized were age 35 to 49. The median age of those hospitalized rose from 29 to 36 during the years covered by the study.

Times staff writer Martin Miller contributed to this article.