BOSTON -- If you're lucky enough to live in Massachusetts, chances are you're going to live for a good long time -- unless you fall.

Fewer people than ever before are dying in Massachusetts and residents' life-expectancy rates are at an all-time high, state health department officials said Thursday, although they noted an increase in elderly deaths related to falls.

The said there was a 65 percent increase in the number of deaths resulting from falls for residents 65 and older between 2005 and 2006.

It's unclear what caused the increase in deaths from falls, officials said, but they speculated it could be attributed to an increasingly elderly population and better reporting.

“We need to better understand the findings in this report related to fall deaths,” Commissioner John Auerbach said.

Officials also noted a spike in deaths from heroin and OxyContin overdoses, but overall the Massachusetts Deaths 2006 report, indicated that an infant born in Massachusetts in 2006 can expect to live to be 80 years old, a life expectancy that outpaces the latest national figures by two years.

Heart disease and cancer, however, continue to be the top killers in the Bay State, with cancer overtaking heart disease as the leading cause of death for the first time in 2006.

Lung cancer ranked first in the number of cancer deaths for both men and women, followed by colorectal cancer deaths.

The faster decline in heart disease deaths over time was attributed to better medical therapies and behavioral interventions to control for risk factors, such as high cholesterol and blood pressure, the state health department said in a prepared release.

Death rates for stroke and diabetes also continued to drop. Deaths rates from stroke decreased 27 percent since 2000, and the diabetes death rate has decreased by 22 percent during that same time period.

Massachusetts overdose deaths caused by heroin and other opioids, such as OxyContin, rose by more than 7 percent per year between 2000 and 2006.

Two-thirds of all poisonings reported to DPH during 2006 were the result of opioid overdoses.

There are also still health disparities along racial and ethnic lines, with more black and Hispanic women dying from breast cancer than all other racial groups. Black non-Hispanic and Hispanic residents also have higher death rates from diabetes than Asian and white non-Hispanics.

Black non-Hispanic residents were 14 times more likely to die from homicide and Hispanic residents were four times more likely to die from homicide than white non-Hispanic residents.