Opioid Overdose Deaths Keep Rising

Deaths from drug overdose has reached record high levels in 2014 with 47,055 people died from drug overdoses in America previous year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention latest report. The age-adjusted rate of deaths caused by opioids, including heroin and opioid pain relievers, rose 14% in 2014, setting a new record.

Heroin, cocaine, painkillers, and sedatives are the most common drug used in an overdose death.

Since 2000, deaths overall from drug overdoses have increased 137 percent while those from opioids have jumped 200 percent, the agency said.

Increases in prescription opioid pain reliever and heroin deaths are the biggest driver of the drug overdose epidemic.

These grim totals placed both OH and Kentucky among the five states with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths as measured per 100,000 residents.

Jane Ballantyne, MD, of the University of Washington, agreed that the increase in illicit fentanyl is a contributor, as is the price drop in other illicit opioids such as black-tar heroin from Mexico.

Some deaths involve more than one type of opioid; these deaths were included in the rates for each category (e.g., a death involving both a synthetic opioid and heroin would be included in the rates for synthetic opioid deaths and in the rates for heroin deaths).

In addition, deaths from illegally made fentanyl – a potent narcotic added to or sold as heroin – are also increasing, the CDC reports. From 2000 to 2014 almost half a million persons in the United States have died from drug overdoses.

CDC Director, Dr. Tom Frieden, said: “The opioid epidemic is devastating American families and communities”. 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’. This drug has shown to reverse symptoms associated with opioid overdose.

Opioid painkillers like oxycodone, which is prescribed for relief from injuries, arthritis, lower back pain, etc., have a high potential for abuse. It suggested public health agencies, medical examiners and coroners, and law-enforcement agencies work collaboratively to improve the detection of these outbreaks through improved investigation and testing. It proposed new draft guidelines this month that include using every other possible approach to managing pain before giving someone an opioid such as fentanyl or oxycontin to control pain.