{"id":14809,"date":"2018-08-30T19:08:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T19:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=14809"},"modified":"2018-11-01T19:08:59","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T19:08:59","slug":"fentanyl-use-drove-drug-overdose-deaths-to-a-record-high-in-2017-cdc-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2018\/08\/fentanyl-use-drove-drug-overdose-deaths-to-a-record-high-in-2017-cdc-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"Fentanyl Use Drove Drug Overdose Deaths To A Record High In 2017, CDC Estimates"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Christopher Ingraham<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Drug overdose deaths surpassed 72,000 in 2017,\u00a0according to provisional estimates<\/a>\u00a0recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That represents an increase of more than 6,000 deaths, or 9.5 percent, over the estimate for the previous 12-month period.<\/span><\/p>\n

That staggering sum works out to about 200 drug overdose deaths every single day, or one every eight minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The increase was driven primarily by a continued surge in deaths involving synthetic opioids, a category that includes fentanyl. There were nearly 30,000 deaths involving those drugs in 2017, according to the preliminary data, an increase of more than 9,000 over the prior year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deaths involving cocaine also shot up significantly, putting the stimulant on par with drugs such as heroin and the category of natural opiates that includes painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. One potential spot of good news is that deaths involving those latter two drug categories appear to have flattened out, suggesting the possibility that opiate mortality may be at or nearing its peak.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span>
\nOverdose estimates for selected drug types in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

The CDC cautions that these figures are early estimates based on monthly death records processed by the agency. The CDC adjusts these figures to correct for underreporting, because some recorded deaths are still pending full investigation. Final mortality figures are typically released at the end of the following calendar year.<\/span><\/p>\n

The CDC updates these provisional numbers monthly. The recent inclusion of December 2017 means that a complete, albeit early look at 2017 overdose mortality is now available for the first time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Geographically the deaths are distributed similarly to how they\u2019ve been in prior years, with parts of Appalachia and New England showing the highest mortality rates. Once again, the highest rates were seen in West Virginia, with 58.7 overdose deaths for every 100,000 residents. The District of Columbia (50.4), Pennsylvania (44.1), Ohio (44.0) and Maryland (37.9) rounded out the top five.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

At the other end of the spectrum, states in the Great Plains had some of the lowest death rates. Nebraska had the fewest with just 8.2 deaths per 100,000, a rate less than one-seventh the rate in West Virginia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the nationwide increase,\u00a0the CDC\u2019s preliminary data<\/a>\u00a0also shows overdose rates fell in a number of states, including North Dakota and Wyoming, compared with the prior year. Particularly significant were the decreases in Vermont and Massachusetts, two states with relatively high rates of overdose mortality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond that, the month-to-month data brings some potentially good news: Nationwide, deaths involving opioids have plateaued and even fallen slightly in recent months, from an estimated high of 49,552 deaths in the 12-month period ending in September 2017 down to 48,612 in the period ending January of this year. While it\u2019s too early to say whether that trend will continue through 2018, those numbers are somewhat encouraging.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span>
\nOpiate death estimates through January 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

A chief concern among substance abuse experts is the ubiquity of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that\u2019s roughly\u00a050 times more potent than heroin<\/a>. Because it\u2019s\u00a0cheap and relatively easy to make<\/a>, it\u2019s often mixed with other drugs such as\u00a0heroin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0cocaine<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Policymakers have struggled to come up with an adequate response to the opioid crisis. Overdose deaths initially ballooned during the Obama administration, which was\u00a0criticized by experts<\/a>\u00a0for being slow to respond to the problem. Last year, the Trump administration\u00a0declared the epidemic a \u201cpublic health emergency\u201d<\/a>\u00a0but allocated no new funding for states to address the issue. Former congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), a member of the task force that the administration convened to tackle the epidemic,\u00a0criticized President Trump<\/a>\u00a0late last year for being \u201call talk and no follow-through\u201d on opioids.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2018\/08\/15\/fentanyl-use-drove-drug-overdose-deaths-record-high-cdc-estimates\/?utm_term=.9c9d31666886<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Christopher Ingraham Drug overdose deaths surpassed 72,000 in 2017,\u00a0according to provisional estimates\u00a0recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That represents an increase of more than 6,000 deaths, or 9.5 percent, over the estimate for the previous 12-month period. That staggering sum works out to about 200 drug overdose deaths every single day, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,34,27,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-heroin-methadone","category-social-affairs-papers","category-synthetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}