A new report captures the scale of the opioid crisis in the USA. The National Security Council analyzed the preventable causes of death in the country in 2017. The finding is clear: the probability of dying from an opioid overdose, according to the report, is one in 96 This is more than the probability of dying in a traffic accident, which is estimated at one in 103.
2017 is the first year in which the number of accidental opioid-related deaths exceeds that due to road accidents, observes the New York Times.
Most fatal overdoses are caused by fentanyl. This synthetic opioid, more powerful than heroin, is widespread on the black market and is responsible for 14.9 deaths per 100,000 in 2017, against 2.9 in 1999, according to The Vox.It was in particular an overdose of fentanyl that causedthe death of American singer Prince in 2016.
The document also points out that most Americans are even more likely to die from natural causes, primarily from heart disease (1 in 6 chance) or cancer (1 in 7).
Fentanyl and heroin were the two main culprits of fatal overdoses in 2016, ahead of cocaine and methamphetamine, recalled the National Center for Health Statistics in December 2018.
Adolescents, other victims of opioids
Another worrying sign of the drug scourge in the United States, 9,000 children and adolescents died of poisoning to prescribed or illicit opioids in 20 years, revealed researchers at Yale University in a study published on December 28, 2018 in the JAMA network Open journal.