“Treatment admissions aged 50 or older increased from 6.6 percent of all admissions 12 years of age or older in 1992 to 12.2 percent in 2008. Between 1992 and 2008, the proportion of older admissions that reported primary alcohol abuse decreased from 84.6 to 59.9 percent, while the proportion that reported primary heroin abuse more than doubled (from 7.2 to 16.0 percent). The proportion of older admissions that reported multiple substances of abuse nearly tripled, increasing from 13.7 percent in 1992 to 39.7 percent in 2008. In 2008, older admissions who initiated use of their primary substance of abuse within the past 5 years were more likely than those in 1992 to have reported prescription pain relievers as their primary substance (25.8 vs. 5.4 percent).”
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