Overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government reported Wednesday. That estimate far eclipses the high of about 72,000 drug overdose deaths reached the previous year and amounts to a 29% increase. The nation was already struggling with its worst overdose epidemic but clearly “COVID has greatly exacerbated the crisis. Lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get, experts said. While prescription painkillers once drove the nation’s overdose epidemic, they were supplanted first by heroin and then by fentanyl, a dangerously powerful opioid, in recent years. Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer but has increasingly been sold illicitly and mixed with other drugs. Fentanyl was involved in more than 60% of the overdose deaths last year, CDC data suggests.
— source apnews.com | Jul 15, 2021
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