Overdose Deaths: Another Dubious Distinction for W.Va.

Drug overdoses have become the leading killer of Mountain State adults under 45, helping to make that cause of death more prevalent in West Virginia than in any other state, The Charleston Gazette and Public Broadcasting has found.

The joint investigation also unearthed a startling national statistic: "For the first time in modern American history, drug overdoses and other types of poisonings now kill more people than guns."

But for both troubling trends, the culprit is not usually illegal drugs. "Seven of the top 10 drugs that helped to kill West Virginians last year were prescription drugs, according to state medical examiner data," the special report, "Prescription for an Epidemic," found.

As for the national rate, “Prescription narcotic deaths rose 152 percent (between 1994 and 2004). Prescription narcotics now kill five times as many Americans as heroin, and almost twice as many as cocaine," the joint investigation discovered.

Among the various factors that emerge from the detail-rich series:

• Patients and their family members, particularly children, have been killed by patches that deliver powerful pain drugs. One patient unwittingly increased her patch's release rate to a fatal level by combining it with a heating pad. A 4-year-old fished out an improperly disposed-of patch from the trash, stuck it to himself, and died. "Another child peeled a pain patch off of his sleeping grandmother and stuck it on himself," the series reported.

• Teenagers raid their parents’ medicine cabinets to throw “pharma parties,” where they toss the pills they find into a bowl for everyone to grab a handful. "That is probably one of the stupidest things I have ever heard about," says a state trooper assigned to drug diversions.

• West Virginia doctors started the Appalachian Pain Foundation to train providers to prescribe and administer painkillers responsibly. Seeking funds to continue it mission, the Foundation has appealed to Congress, the Legislature "and the state’s $44 million OxyContin settlement, which West Virginia won after Purdue Pharma and three of its executives pleaded guilty to misleading the public about the painkiller’s dangers." The Foundation "came up empty."

The Gazette also offers photos, graphics and audio for the series, which began Sunday.

The joint series reunites Tara Tuckwiller with her former Gazette colleague, Scott Finn, now with Public Broadcasting. Tuckwiller and Finn were the first to report that methadone had become America's most deadly prescription drug. Their award-winning 2006 series, "The Killer Cure," remains posted online.