Americans dying younger as opioid crisis deepens
Life expectancy in the United States continues to fall as more Americans commit suicide or die from drug overdoses in the longest decline in longevity since World War I.
For decades Americans had enjoyed steadily improving prospects as life expectancy rose in the developed world. In 2015, however, after years of recession and in the midst of a worsening opioid drug epidemic, the United States became the only wealthy nation where the measure was falling.
Yesterday the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the trend had continued. Life expectancy fell in 2015, was level in 2016 and fell again last year – the longest period of decline since the 1910s when life expectancy fell to 39 and nearly a million Americans died in a world war and a global flu pandemic. Life expectancy at birth is now 78.6 years, lower by a couple of months than in 2015.
Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, said that ‘‘life expectancy gives us a snapshot of the nation’s overall health and these sobering statistics are a wake-up call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable’’.
A rise in suicide and drug overdoses was blamed for the continued decline. More than 70,000 people died from overdoses last year – a death toll which surpasses that of Aids in the worst years of the epidemic.
The proliferation of powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl has been blamed for the death toll, which was steepest among adults aged between 25 and 54. About 20 US states, mostly in the east of the country were worst hit, with the highest death rates in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Redfield said that about 48,000 of the overdoses related to opioids. He described drug addiction as a ‘‘chronic medical condition’’ that could be triggered in a small percentage of the populace by something as innocuous as a dentist’s prescription after the removal of a wisdom tooth.
‘‘One of my six children almost died from cocaine that was contaminated with fentanyl,’’ he told CBS News. Part of the problem, he said, was the shame attached to addiction. ‘‘My own son was in tears when he finally told us that he was using cocaine and I didn’t understand, why didn’t he come to us earlier? Well, because he was made to feel the shame.’’
Last year’s rise in overdoses, while only just below double figures, marked a slowdown from the rise of 21.6 per cent in 2016. Other data suggests that the overdose death rate may be levelling off, albeit at a staggeringly high level.
The suicide rate last year, just over 47,000 deaths, was the highest in half a century. The CDC said that it had risen by a third since 1999 and was higher in rural districts, where people were committing suicide at nearly twice the rate of those in urban areas.
William Dietz, a director at the school of public health at George Washington University, described a pervading ‘‘sense of despair which accounts for both suicide rates and drug deaths’’. The economic recovery had not reached everyone, he said.
He noted a widening wealth divide and a ‘‘fraying of the social fabric’’. – The Times
‘‘My own son was in tears when he finally told us that he was using cocaine and I didn’t understand, why didn’t he come to us earlier? Well, because he was made to feel the shame.’’
Robert Redfield, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention