Drug Overdose Death Statistics [2022]: Opioids, Fentanyl & More

Drug overdose deaths are up 30% year-over-year and opioids are a factor in 7 out of every 10 overdose deaths.

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Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Top 100,000 Annually

Provisional data from CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicate that there were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 12-month period ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5% from the 78,056 deaths during the same period the year before.

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The addiction crisis is deadlier than ever before

Overdoses are the #1 cause of accidental death in our country. 81,230 overdose deaths occurred in the United States from June 2019 through May 2020. That’s the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a single year. Synthetic opioids like fentanyl are the biggest drivers but the use of stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamines is also on the rise. From 2013 to 2018, the rate of cocaine overdose deaths tripled.

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COVID-19 and the opioid crisis: When a pandemic and an epidemic collide

More than 20 million people in the United States have a substance use disorder. Now, COVID-19 has left many locked down, laid off, and flooded with uncertainty. So far, experts see signs of relapses, rising overdoses, and other worries. What can be done?

Dave Quisenberry is determined to stay away from opioids, which have robbed him of so much. When COVID-19 put his building services job on hold for many weeks, though, the 48-year-old West Virginian…

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Dying of loneliness: What COVID-19 has taught us about the opioid epidemic

Opioid overdoses have been on the rise as the COVID-19 pandemic has taken center stage. Rather than existing separately, there appears to be an interplay between COVID-19 and addictions. Now, experts say the key to saving lives might be addressing the isolation brought on by the pandemic and the stigma associated with addiction.

“In this country, you have stigma and the law, and these drive people into the shadows,” said Peter Canning, a paramedic on the front lines of Connecticut’s battle against opioids.

Dying of loneliness: What COVID-19 has taught us about the opioid epidemic - ABC News

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A crisis on top of a crisis: COVID-19 and the opioid epidemic

For people struggling with opioid use disorder, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges at every turn. Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discussed why 2020 is likely to be the deadliest year on record for opioid overdoses...

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Why COVID-19 is a Perfect Storm in the Addiction World

A loved one falling ill. Kids unexpectedly out of school with no childcare. Coping with physical distancing. Daily routines interrupted. Life milestones cancelled. Adjusting to working from home, or worse, not being able to work at all. These are the crises we’re all facing as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

At Shatterproof, we are bracing for how all these awful circumstances will come together to impact the addiction crisis in America. We must recognize the scope of the problem and start moving urgently to prevent future tragedy.

To understand how COVID-19 may compound the addiction crisis in America …

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A decade into the opioid crisis, Colorado hospitals have changed the way they treat opioid-exposed babies

Two years ago, Colorado babies born addicted to opioids often were given doses of methadone or morphine and, on average, stayed in the hospital for 17 days as nurses weaned them off the drugs.

Now, the average hospital stay for a newborn going through opioid withdrawal has dropped to 6.5 days. And instead of treating those infants with regular doses of synthetic opioids or painkillers and admitting them to the neonatal intensive care unit, Colorado hospitals...

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The death toll of the opioid epidemic is higher than originally thought, researchers say

Opioid-related overdoses could be 28 percent higher than reported because of incomplete death records, researchers found in a study published Thursday.

More than 400,000 people in the United States have died of opioid overdoses since the turn of the century, a quarter of them in just the past six years. But University of Rochester researchers found that between 1999 and 2016, about 100,000 more people died from opioids who were not accounted for — potentially obscuring the scope of the opioid epidemic and affecting funding for government programs intended to confront it, Elaine Hill, an economist and senior author of the study, told The Washington Post.

The discrepancies were most pronounced in several states, including...

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