US's opioid epidemic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-great-opioid-epidemic/2016/12/11/77bd8998-be4d-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.03e70f56d0ff
AN ALL-TIME record 52,404 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2015, according to the latest data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Once rare, these avoidable deaths are now more common than auto-accident fatalities or gun-inflicted homicides and suicides. Some 80 percent of the drug-related deaths were due to misuse of opioids, a category that includes not only illicit substances such as heroin and synthetic fentanyl but also legal pain medications such as OxyContin and Vicodin, which are used for chronic pain as well as for short-term care after surgery or dental work. Indeed, the prescription opioid category accounted for the largest share of opioid deaths, at 17,536.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/nyregion/fentanyl-epidemic-long-island.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
In New York City, more than 1,000 people are expected to die from drug overdoses this year — the first recorded four-digit death total in city history, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Nearly half of all unintentional drug overdose deaths in the city since July have involved fentanyl, the health department said.

The medical examiners of Long Island’s two counties, Nassau and Suffolk, compiled the new numbers. “Fentanyl has surpassed heroin as the most commonly detected drug in fatal opioid overdoses,” Dr. Michael J. Caplan, the Suffolk County medical examiner, said in a written statement about the statistics, which were obtained by The New York Times ahead of their release. “The influx of illicitly manufactured fentanyl from overseas is a nationwide issue that requires a multidisciplinary intervention from all levels of government.”

“We’ve never seen as much of a drug this strong on the black market before,” said Jeffrey Sheridan, an Oyster Bay, N.Y., resident and addiction counselor whose 34-year-old nephew died from a fentanyl overdose on Staten Island in 2015. “It’s essentially the serial killer of drugs. It’s not something you can use for any kind of duration and survive.”

Fentanyl was the drug that killed Prince in April.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/no-longer-mayberry-a-small-ohio-city-fights-an-epidemic-of-self-destruction/2016/12/29/a95076f2-9a01-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_chillicothe-730pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.9d4de0971110
"It’s the Zombie Apocalypse"

Death rates have risen sharply among whites, particularly women, particularly those with a high school education or less — the white working class that played a key role in the November election.

Last year, overall life expectancy in the United States fell for the first time since 1993, when HIV was rampant.

Today there is no emergent virus running amok. Instead, Americans are dying from a rash of pathologies, sicknesses and addictions that experts call “diseases of despair.”

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm655051e1.htm?s_cid=mm655051e1_w

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/opioid-crisis-epidemic.html?hpw&rref=us&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

During 2015, drug overdoses accounted for 52,404 U.S. deaths, including 33,091 (63.1%) that involved an opioid. There has been progress in preventing methadone deaths, and death rates declined by 9.1%. However, rates of deaths involving other opioids, specifically heroin and synthetic opioids other than methadone (likely driven primarily by illicitly manufactured fentanyl) (2,3), increased sharply overall and across many states.

(In 2015, 30,092 people were killed in the US in traffic accidents - https://www.kaggle.com/anokas/2015-us-traffic-fatalities )