NEW YORK, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- A U.S. study finds injecting drugs such as heroin and cocaine increases death risk by at least three times in the first three years of use.
Researchers at the New York Academy of Medicine found people who have used injection drugs for two years or less have three times the death risk of non-injecting peers of the same demographic group. After 10 years of use, risk rises to eight times, researchers said.
Causes of death included AIDS, overdose, heart disease, firearms and medical complications of drug use, researchers said.
"There is no window of safety," wrote researcher David Vlahov. "When adolescents and young adults start to inject, they may think that death risk applies only to older, longer-term, 'broken down' drug users. But they face dangerous consequences from the start."
Researchers recruited 256 new injection drug users in Baltimore through street outreach programs in 1988-89 and followed them for 12 years. Study participants had a median age of 30 at the study's start, and most were African-American men.
