Drug overdose-induced deaths reached a record high previous year, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released this week.
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“The increasing number of deaths from opioid overdose is alarming”, CDC director Thomas Frieden said in the statement.
In addition to New Hampshire, thirteen other states saw statistically significant increases in drug overdose deaths from 2013 to 2014 to include ME (27.3 percent), New Mexico (20.8), Alabama (19.7) and Maryland (19.2).
The most commonly prescribed opioid painkillers – like oxycodone and hydrocodone – were involved in more overdose deaths than any other type of the drug.
“The United States is experiencing an epidemic of drug overdose (poisoning) deaths”, the CDC’s report reads. From 2000 to 2014, almost half a million Americans died from drug poisoning. Snyder, under the state’s newly formed Michigan Prescription Drug and Opioid Abuse Task Force, released more than two dozen recommendations to tackle state’s drug abuse ‘crisis’.
“Although efforts to reduce reliance on opioids for the treatment of chronic pain did reduce abuse and death initially, that reduction is probably overwhelmed by the thousands of people who have already become dependent on opioids through pain treatment”, Ballantyne said. It’s an epidemic that claimed the lives of more than 47,000 Americans. The new report, however, suggested that heroin-related death had something to do with the drug’s accessibility.
In its Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, the CDC said a 137% spike in overdose deaths since 2000 has been driven nearly entirely by the tragedy of opioid/heroin addiction. That’s the most reported in the nation since at least 1970, according to CDC records. More people are also dying from fentanyl, an opioid that is sold as a heroin.
Although the rate of heroin deaths is rising sharply, it’s still significantly outnumbered by the number of deaths caused by prescription painkillers.
“The rate of drug overdose deaths increased significantly for both sexes, persons aged 25-44 years and above 55 years, non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks, and in the Northeastern, Midwestern, and Southern regions of the United States”, the report continued.
Meanwhile, 10,574 people died from heroin use in 2014, a 26 percent increase for the year. Using these drugs results in an increased tolerance to pain and a sense of euphoria.
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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.
