Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 18th of September 2017 to The Sounding Line.
Enjoy The Sounding Line? Click here to subscribe for free.
Today’s ‘Chart of the Day’ comes via Statista, and illustrates the terrifying rise in heroin overdoses in the US since 2002. As Statista notes:
“According to the most recent data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, fatal heroin overdoses in the U.S. grew from 2,089 in 2002 to 13,219 in 2016. That represents a shocking 533 percent increase. During the same period of time, the number of American heroin users climbed from 404,000 to 948,000.”
“The data shows just how severe the U.S. opioid crisis has become. In 2008, drug-induced deaths claimed more lives than car crashes for the first time and the gap has continued to widen since then. They have also reached another grim and poignant landmark. Drug overdose deaths are expected to surpass 71,000 this year, a significantly higher death toll than the Vietnam War which claimed just over 58,000 lives.”
You will find more statistics at Statista
The surging number of heroin and fentanyl overdoses has become so extreme that the cost of providing the medicine to reverse overdoses (naloxone or Narcan) is overwhelming some communities. As Bloomberg notes, Middletown, Ohio has been forced to propose limiting the number of naloxone doses administered for repeat overdosers:
“Picard says drug poisonings in Middletown have dropped since his suggestion made national headlines in June. “Every overdose run costs the city $1,104,” Picard says, adding that Middletown had been on track to spend 10 times the $10,000 it budgeted for Narcan.”
This is a national health emergency which is not getting the attention it should.
P.S. If you would like to be updated via email when we post a new article, please click here. It’s free and we won’t send any promotional materials.
Would you like to be notified when we publish a new article on The Sounding Line? Click here to subscribe for free.
People in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers.
Police can not fix that.
Thank you for your interest and comment.
Given the explosive growth in deadly overdoses over such a short period, I imagine the problem is not with people in chronic pain.
Mental, emotional, socially detached pain. Just as real as organic pain. Let them die or help them, those are the two choices. It is an epidemic of nihilistic fatalism. I don’t know what the answer is, sad…
I friend of mine lost their 20 yr old son a year ago to an overdose. My cousin 50 yrs old died about two years ago, also overdose. My son works in law enforcement. So I have some exposure. In the case of my friends son and my cousin it was abuse that led to accidental overdose, e.g. neither took what they thought would be a lethal dose. My son deals day in and out with people hooked on opioids. They seem to fall largely into two camps. Illegal drug users who then get addicted to meth or other weaning… Read more »
When you criminalize an illness, you will be unable to separate out the treatable from the untreatable. There is no ethical difference between someone who takes Xanax for anxiety disorder and someone who takes a narcotic for a different psychiatric disorder. Would you rather have your loved one on some kind of maintenance narcotic that they get from a doctors office while they are caringly treated by professionals or would you rather have them go to the hood. Who is benefiting from this difference? Surely not you nor I or anyone who has loved ones who require narcotics. Is it… Read more »