Overdose deaths set record in the U.S.
Drug overdoses killed about 72,000 Americans last year, a record number that reflects a rise of around 10 percent. The death toll is higher than the peak yearly totals from HIV, car crashes or guns.
Drug overdoses killed about 72,000 Americans last year, a record number that reflects a rise of around 10 percent, according to new preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death toll is higher than the peak yearly death totals from HIV, car crashes or gun deaths.
Analysts pointed to two major reasons for the increase: A growing number of Americans are using opioids, and drugs are becoming more deadly, especially with the introduction of fentanyl. It is the second factor that most likely explains the bulk of the increased number of overdoses last year. Texas deaths rise
Overdose deaths rose sharply in several Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states. In Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, where the opioid death rate has been high for years, overdose deaths increased by more than 17 percent in each state. In New Jersey, they rose 27 percent.
Texas saw its overdose death rate increase by 7.4 percent over 2015-16 — a
figure considered statistically significant by the CDC.
The picture is not equally bleak everywhere. In parts of New England, where a more dangerous drug supply arrived early, the number of overdoses has begun to fall. That was the case in Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island; each state has had major public health campaigns and has increased addiction treatment. Preliminary 2018 numbers from Massachusetts suggest that the death rate there may be continuing to fall.
But nationwide, the crisis worsened in the first year of the Donald Trump presidency, a continuation of a long-term trend. During 2017, the president declared the opioid crisis a national public health emergency, and states began tapping a $1 billion grant program to help fight the problem.
“Because it’s a drug epidemic as opposed to an infectious disease epidemic like Zika, the response is slower,” said Dan Ciccarone, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies heroin markets. “Because of the forces of stigma, the population is reluctant to seek care. I wouldn’t expect a rapid downturn; I
would expect a slow, smooth downturn.”
A large government telephone survey suggests that around 2.1 million Americans had opioid use disorders in 2016, but that number may be an undercount because not all drug users have telephones and some may not mention their drug use because of the stigma. Ciccarone said the real number could be as high as 4 million. ‘Exponential rate’
The number of opioid users has been going up “in most places, but not at this exponential rate,” said Brandon Marshall, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. “The dominant factor is the changing drug supply.”
Congress is debating a variety of bills to fight the epidemic. Many of the measures, which have passed the House but have not reached the Senate floor, are focused on reducing medical prescriptions of opioids, and are meant to reduce the number of new drug users. But the package also includes measures that could expand treatment for people who already use opioids.