CDC: drug overdose deaths reach record high

According to the report’s findings, nearly 50,000 Americans died in 2014 due to drug overdoses, which is not only more people than were killed in road traffic accidents, but is also more than twice the number recorded in the year 2000.

Since 2000, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses in both males and females has increased by 137 per cent and deaths from opioids have increased by 300 per cent from the same year. Deaths attributable to these drugs rose by nine percent from 2013 to 2014.

Opioids, which are primarily prescription pain relief drugs and heroine, counted for 28,647 deaths in 2014, according to the report. “The opioid epidemic is devastating American families and communities”.

Over the past year, obituaries spotlighting victims of drug addiction have put faces to these statistics.

The United States is experiencing an epidemic of drug overdose (poisoning) deaths.

The highest overdose death rates were seen in the states of Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, and West Virginia, and West Virginia led all states with an overdose rate of 35.5 per 100,000 compared to a national average of 15 per 100,000.

Forty-seven thousand people died from overdoses in 2014, mainly as a result of heroin and other opioids. These departures were also on the upswing for the two genders, non-Hispanic whites and blacks, and adults aged 25 to 65.

The CDC is now in the midst of a battle over prescription drugs.

The CDC has issued new guidelines to make it harder to access opioids, which suggest trying every other option to managing pain before prescribing opioids such as fentanyl oxoycontin, but this would not apply to terminally ill patients.

State and local public health agencies, medical examiners and coroners, and law enforcement agencies must work together to improve detection of and response to illicit opioid overdose outbreaks to address this emerging threat to public health and safety. These deaths increased by 9 percent (813 more deaths in 2014 than 2013).

Prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and morphine are derived from the same poppy plants as heroin. However, at high doses, it can also slow breathing. Before, the growing trend for overdose death was related to misuse and overuse of opioid. This drug has shown to reverse symptoms associated with opioid overdose.