The United States has been thrust into an opioid epidemic, affecting the nation’s public health as well as social and economic welfare. While it may be hard to believe, opioid misuse has been around for some time, with overdose death rates quadrupling since 1999. Opioids, which include prescription opioids, heroin, and fentanyl, killed more than 33,000 people in 2015, with nearly half of overdose deaths involving prescription opioids. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 91 Americans die each day from an opioid overdose. The economic burden of opioid misuse in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, which includes the cost of healthcare, lost productivity, treatment, and criminal justice involvement. (more…)
Today more than ever, as the United States experiences record breaking-overdose statistics, the public is more exposed to the dangers of addiction. Slowly, the population finds increasingly harder to ignore or deny the impact of opiates on the American people, with over 33,000 Americans dying from opioid use in 2015. Hidden beneath the veil of the terrible epidemic of opioid overdose deaths, looms the fact that many of these deaths are not accidental. They are suicides. Addiction recently published a study of five million veterans in which scientists reported of those diagnosed with opioid use disorder showed an increased risk of suicide in males and females. The risk of suicide death in women was double that for men; the rate was eight times higher than the national average. The researchers concluded that the suicide rate among those suffering from an opioid use disorder was 86.9/100,000, compared to the rate of 14/100,000 in the general U.S. population. (more…)
Recently the Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie urged President Trump to declare the U.S. opioid crisis a national emergency. Citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Commission said that an estimated 142 Americans die daily from a drug overdose. Drug overdoses now kill more people than gun homicides and car crashes combined. In 2015, two-thirds of the drug overdoses were linked to opioids both illegal (e.g., heroin, illicitly manufactured synthetic opioids) and legal (e.g., oxycodone, hydrocodone). (more…)
Since 2013, Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida has seen the number of overdoses from both fentanyl and heroin explode. Medical professionals and local officials in the Miami area are searching for ways to help get heroin users into treatment rather than serving jail time. In fact, this effort has caught on nationwide.