Narcotic painkillers are causing most deaths
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Drug addiction has already become a common problem in today’s world and last year our country registered a record number of deaths caused by drug overdose.
There are many people in the world and in our country, who are addicted to different types of narcotics. Sometimes, some of these people cross the line and take too much, their bodies can’t handle it anymore and they die. There are also cases in which people who are not necessarily addicted to drugs choose to end their lives by taking too many pills at once.
According to statistics, there have been registered more than 47,000 deaths by overdose in America. The number was higher than in 2013 by 14 percent. It is estimated by the CDC that almost half a million Americans have died from overdose since 2000.
The most common drugs which are the reason for OD deaths are Oxycodone and Vicodin which are usually prescribed as painkillers. It looks like from the 14 percent growth since 2013, 9 percent was linked to these particular drugs. But heroin overdoses have also increasing, tripling from 2010 to 2014.
According to research, there are no differentiating factors between people who are dying from overdoses, meaning the overdoses are not influenced by gender, age or race. The records number of cases was registered in five states: Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Hampshire and New Mexico.
Although there are two main ‘trends’ regarding overdose, which are illegal drugs and painkillers, both of them are constantly increasing hitting a record in 2014.
There were also many deaths, over 5,000, which were caused by synthetic narcotics, including illegally made fentanyl.
It seems that there are many people who abuse narcotic painkillers and who, in time, switch to heroine. This usually happens with young adults and it is mainly due to the fact that heroine is not that expensive and it’s easier to find.
Although it’s quite clear that reducing heroine availability is very difficult, prescribed narcotic painkillers could be controlled more easily. Furthermore, drug addiction treatment should become cheaper in order to be available to as many people as possible and also increase the access to naloxone, a drug which should reverse the symptoms of an overdose.
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Joe Hennessey
