No longer, reports the LA Times, is drug abuse considered to be a hazard of youth.  While drug use and deaths from overdoses declined among teens and young adults in the past dozen years, the number of drug-related deaths among middle-aged adults in California rose to 3,691 in 2003 (the last year for which the figures are available), up 73% from the 1990 figures.



The U.S. Substance and Mental Health Services Administration agrees with the findings of the study.  According to this government organization, more than a third of today’s drug users are over the age of 35.  Twenty-five years ago, that number sat at about 12%.

The study also recognizes the fact that many of the over-35 set who die from drug overdoses are long-time, hard-core users who’ve never quit using from the time they developed their drug habit at a young age until the time of their death. 

Costello quotes Karl Sporer, a San Francisco emergency room doctor and drug treatment expert who notes that "using year after year can have a clear and deleterious physical effect," and that drugs "take a toll as people continue to use."

Most overdose deaths in this age group are caused by opiates, including heroin, which can cause the lungs to stop working.  Cocaine is also a major culprit in drug deaths of middle agers because it causes heart attacks or weakens and enlarges the heart. 

The author of the article also notes that these figures, consistent throughout much of the country, have thrown the drug treatment industry into a tailspin as they find it necessary to alter their programs and gear therapy towards treatment of middle aged adults rather than teens and young adults.