The 2015 numbers won’t be in for at least a week, but numbers recently published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 2014 was one of the deadliest years for drug overdose deaths.
According the to CDC, unintentional overdose deaths from prescription or street drugs increased 14 percent in 2014. Prescription drugs and heroin continue to be the leading causes of unintentional death for Americans, even outpacing traffic accidents. In 2014, 47,055 people died from fatal drug overdoses, 1.5 times greater than the number of people who died in car crashes.
CDC Drug Overdose Findings
Other findings from the CDC report show just how out of hand the current drug epidemic is in the United States:
- Opioids are involved in 61 percent of all drug overdose deaths.
- Deaths from natural opiates like morphine, codeine and semisynthetic prescription pain killers like oxycodone and hydrocodone jumped 10 percent in 2014.
- Deaths from heroin overdoses increased 26 percent.
- The biggest increase in deaths came from synthetic opioids. Deaths from synthetic opioids increased 80 percent in 2014.
Overdose deaths have increased here in Minnesota, but our state wasn’t among the states that saw the sharpest increase in prescription overdose deaths last year. West Virginia took home that dubious honor, followed by New Mexico, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio.
The landscape of prescription drug overdoses has continued to get worse over the past decade and a half. Since 2000, opioid drug overdoses have increased more than 200 percent in this country. More than half a million Americans have lost their lives to prescription drug overdoses during that 14 year stretch. Drug testing kits are a way god way of looking into a person drug using habits, this a common way used by employers to test their employees. If you would like to know more about drug kits, you might be interested in checking out this website.
If you know someone who needs help dealing with an addiction to painkillers or drugs, contact us. We’ve helped so many people put an addiction behind them. Here are a couple other outlets for people looking for more information on prescription drug abuse.
Related source: CNN
