According to government studies, Americans died in unprecedented numbers of drug overdoses as the epidemic expanded throughout the country, owing to a lack of accessibility to treatment, escalating mental health issues, and the increased distribution of extremely strong new street narcotics.
As per preliminary estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics, over 100,000 Americans were killed by overdoses in the 1 year period ending in April, up over 30% from the 78,000 fatalities the previous year. This is the first moment that the amount of overdose fatalities in the US has surpassed 100,000 per year, surpassing the total toll of vehicle accidents and firearms.
“These are numbers we have never seen before,” , director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said of the tally. The fatalities have wide repercussions, since most of them occur among people aged 25 to 55, in the prime of life, she added.
“They leave behind friends, family and children, if they have children, so there are a lot of downstream consequences,” Dr. Volkow said. “This is a major challenge to our society,” declared Dr. Nora Volkow.
Though the pace of increase in mortality appears to have decreased in recent months, experts say the gloomy threshold still suggests a public health catastrophe whose scope was both disguised and hastened by the Covid epidemic.
The increasing use of fentanyl, a quick narcotic 100 times as strong as morphine, exacerbated the spike in fatalities, the great majority of which were triggered by synthetic opioids. Fentanyl is frequently being added covertly to other unlawfully made narcotics to boost their strength.
Individuals in rehabilitation and those who are battling with addictions are susceptible to relapsing. The early pandemic lockdowns and following unraveling of interpersonal networks, combined with an increase in mental health illnesses such as anxiety and depression, contributed to the creation of a health tidal wave.
