Methadone—A Cause of Death

Abstract

The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of methadone in the United States, predominantly as a method of treating narcotic addiction. Concomitant with this has been a proportionate rise in the number of deaths in which methadone is either the cause of death or an incidental toxicologic finding. This indicates an increasingly wide-spread abuse of methadone. In Philadelphia, for example, there were only 4 deaths related to methadone between 1967 and 1969. The number rose dramatically in 1970 to 22, in 1971 to 27, and in the first 10 months of 1972 to 37. Of those deaths in 1972, 17 were directly attributable to methadone, 15 were attributable to a combination of methadone and one or more other narcotic and dangerous drugs, and 5 were due to causes other than drugs but methadone was found by postmortem toxicology.