The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says accidental overdoses are now the nation’s leading cause of accidental death – largely because of prescription sedatives and painkillers.

Dramatic increases in fatal drug overdoses have almost doubled in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control reviewed death certificates from 1999 to 2004 and found a spike in overdoses, led by white females, young people and southerners.

“Some of the increase we know in the 1990s was due to cocaine, some to heroin, but really overall in the last 10 or 15 years its the prescription drugs that are driving this dramatic increase, says Dr. Len Paulozzi, author of this CDC report.

CDC researchers suspect sedatives and prescription drugs like oxycontin and vicodin. They think that's why the overdose rate for women, in particular, more than doubled. Women are more likely to be prescribed a narcotic by their doctor and are more likely to abuse it.

Middle-aged men are still the most likely to die of a drug overdose, but women are closing the gap. And according to the CDC, deadly overdoses at least doubled in 23 states, spiking in rural areas and the south - up an astonishing 550 percent in West Virginia. Meanwhile, fatal drug overdoses in teenagers soared 113 percent.

“The broadest newest development in substance abuse in America is the intentional abuse of medicine, said Stephen Pasierb of the Partnership for a Drug Free America. “It's gone from subset to whole tier of abuse.”

While the intentional abuse of medicine is still lower than marijuana, it’s higher than heroin, cocaine and ecstasy.

Pasierb says among adolescents and teens there is a growing belief that this kind of drug abuse is somehow safer, which may explain why more young people are overdosing, at the same time the government reports declining drug use for teens. In general, drug use is declining, but an estimated 19.5 million Americans use illegal drugs every month.