Deadly drug overdoses hit all-time high in 2014 — CDC

“More persons died from drug overdoses in the United States in 2014 than during any previous year on record”.

CDC Director, Dr. Tom Frieden, said: “The opioid epidemic is devastating American families and communities”.

“Since 2000, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137 percent, including a 200 percent increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin)”.

The CDC said “two distinct but interrelated trends” are visible in the data: a 15-year rise in prescription painkiller deaths and a more recent surge in heroin use and overdose deaths.

That includes a record number of overdose deaths in 2014, according to the agency.

More men and women of almost all ages, as well whites and blacks, are dying from drug overdoses, the researchers found. The highest rates of death from overdose were seen in West Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Kentucky, and OH, the CDC report said.

Opioids, which are primarily prescription pain relief drugs and heroine, counted for 28,647 deaths in 2014, according to the report. More people are also dying from fentanyl, an opioid that is sold as a heroin.

In total, a little more than 47,000 people died a year ago from drug overdoses. Since 2000, overdoses from opioids have quadrupled, the report noted.

Opioid painkillers accounted to get a nine percent increase of departures in 2014 to 813 individuals. Other risk factors are given by its high availability, its low price and its high purity.

Limit initiation into opioid misuse and addiction.

“Efforts to improve safer prescribing of prescription opioids must be intensified”, the CDC report stated.

The CDC has proposed that doctors prescribe the meds only as a last choice for chronic pain, after first trying non-opioid pain relievers, physical therapy and other options.

More than that, people addicted to opioids should have access to treatment, including access to naloxone, a drug that can reverse the symptoms in case of an opioid overdose.

Sixty percent of the overdoses were from opioids. State and local public health agencies, medical examiners and coroners, and law enforcement agencies must work together to address this emerging threat to public health and safety.

In January last, the CDC was right on track to finalize a new set of guidelines for prescribing opioid painkillers.

Because we also have opioid receptors in our brain stem – the body’s main control center that is in charge of automatic processes such as blood pressure and breathing – overdosing on heroin can slow and even stop breathing, leading to brain damage or coma.

An astonishing new report shows that drug overdoses have been climbing to dizzying heights in 14 states..