CDC Says More People Are Dying Of Drug Overdoses Than Ever Before

And heroin-related deaths have tripled since 2010.

Deaths from drug overdoses have surged across the USA to record levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of the more than 47,000 people who died from a drug overdose previous year, the majority – almost 28,000 – involved the use of heroin, prescription painkillers, heroin, or other opioids.

Surprising new statistics have recently been released showing that drug overdose deaths in the United States have risen dramatically over the years, a continuing trend that’s been particularly noticeable since 2013. OH was second, with more than 2,700. “The opioid outbreak is devastating American families and communities”.

Heroin killed 10,574 persons during 2015, an increase with 26 percent from 2013. Since the turn of the century nearly half a million people have lost their lives as a result of a drug overdose. Because fentanyl is combined with heroin or straight-up sold as fentanyl, the CDC theorizes that “illicit fentanyl-associated deaths might represent an emerging and troubling feature of the rise in illicit opioid overdoses that has been driven by heroin”. The report showed 13% increase in deaths due to drug overdoses in 2014 in MI compared to the rate in 2013.

In sheer numbers, California – the most populous state – had the most overdose deaths past year, with more than 4,500.

In a press release announcing its findings, the CDC wrote that overdoses from heroin and prescription painkillers “are the biggest drivers of the drug overdose epidemic”.

“Efforts to improve safer prescribing of prescription opioids must be intensified”, the CDC report stated. Other risk factors are given by its high availability, its low price and its high purity.

According to the CDC, the way to curb the epidemic of drug abuse is to limit the amount of narcotic painkillers being prescribed; to increase the availability of addiction treatment, including medication-assisted treatment; and to expand access and use of naloxone – a drug that reverses the symptoms of a narcotic overdose. But the pushback has been hard from patients, doctors and the drug industry, as well as groups such as the U.S. Pain Foundation and the American Academy of Pain Management.

The CDC said the problem is that death certificate data doesn’t distinguish between illicitly manufactured fentanyl and prescription fentanyl.