Tag: drugs

Opioids!

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Opioid Overdoses Kill More Americans Than Car Crashes 

According to the Emergency Email and Wireless Network, U.S life expectancy has been dropping year-on-year since 2015. However, it’s not due to the prevalence of a number of illnesses. It isn’t even because of the amount of car deaths on American roads. Rather, it’s down to the increasing number of opioid deaths across the country.  In some of the most recent reports, around 63,000 Americans died of an overdose in 2016; of that, almost two-thirds were the direct result of an opioid overdose. That adds up to roughly 42,249. Read more HERE.

CDC Reveals Deadliest Drug in the US 

According to the latest numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, Fentanyl is now the most commonly used drug that is involved in drug overdoses. The new report says that the rate of drug overdoses involving the synthetic opioid increased by about 113% each year from 2013 through 2016. For more information, click HERE.

Opioids, Heroin, and Death

Opioids, Heroin, and Death

Drug overdose deaths and opioid-involved deaths continue to increase in the United States. The majority of drug overdose deaths (more than six out of ten) involve an opioid.1  Since 1999, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription opioids and heroin) quadrupled.2 From 2000 to 2015 more than half a million people died from drug overdoses. 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. IN 2016, approximately 54,000 people died from opioid overdoses. That’s more than all the Americans who died in the Vietnam War, more than people killed because of gun violence, car crashes or from HIV/AIDS at the height of the AIDS epidemic.  In Connecticut, residents are more likely to die from unintentional drug overdose than a motor vehicle accident/ A majority of these deaths are linked to overdose of prescription opioid painkillers. According to 2013 CDC report, the Connecticut age-adjusted rate for drug induced mortality is 16.4 per 100,000 population compared to the nation rate of 14.6.

  • Listen to a very interesting interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross here.
  • Read about increases in drug and opioid-involved overdose deaths in the USA between 2010 – 2015   here.
  • Read about what we’re doing in CT  here.