This report released on October 30 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and compiled from Washington Department of Health data found that Washington’s opioid overdose death rate vastly exceeds the national average.  In addition, the report found that the overdoses were concentrated among the state’s Medicaid population, with Medicaid enrollees 5.7 times more likely to die of an overdose than the general population.

From the report:

For this analysis, the Washington State Department of Health defined an overdose death involving prescription opioids as a death in Washington during 2004--2007 of a state resident whose death certificate had 1) a manner of death of "accidental" or "natural"; 2) one or more contributing causes coded to "poisoning by narcotics" or a "mental and behavioral disorder due to use of opioids" (based on International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision codes T40.0--T40.6 and F11*); 3) specific words compatible with an acute drug intoxication recorded in any of the cause of death fields (e.g., "overdose"); and 4) a prescription opioid term in any of the cause of death fields. Examples of prescription opioid terms sought on manual review of the certificates were "oxycodone," "methadone," and "hydrocodone." Although morphine is a prescription opioid painkiller, it is also a metabolite of heroin. Therefore, mention of morphine on a death certificate was only accepted as evidence that a death was prescription opioid--related when the certificate specified that the morphine was a prescription drug. As a result, 82 deaths involving morphine and no other opioids (36.6% of all deaths in which morphine was mentioned) were excluded from this analysis.

Full report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5842a1.htm

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2009). Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids among Medicaid enrollees - Washington, 2004—2007.