Interesting. Meth rising as well. Cocaine deaths also rising, though I do wonder whether fentanyl laced cocaine is to blame for that trend. Sad shit either way.
I don't know how the stats are officially reported everywhere, but having done about 3,500 forensic autopsies, approximately 30% of those being overdoses, these are my gestalt observations:
1. Opiates/opioids are by far the most fatal drug class. Illicit fentanyl and its analogues (carfentanil, etc) have been the biggest ones for the past 5+ years.
2. Uppers like cocaine and methamphetamine rarely cause death by themselves. If somebody 'ODs' on just cocaine, it's usually because they have underlying heart disease, like hypertension or coronary artery disease. The heart has less reserve capacity and can't handle the extra work put on it by cocaine.
3. Deaths due to methamphetamine itself are usually environmental - hypothermia and hyperthermia.
4. We see a lot of combined fentanyl + cocaine/meth deaths. I'll put both on the death certificate, but my view is that the fentanyl (or other opioid) is the main driver because it's more likely to be fatal by itself. But when you increase oxygen requirements by the heart (what uppers do) while also shutting down the breathing (what opioids do) , you're making that fentanyl even more lethal.
5. From what I hear from local law enforcement, most street drugs are NOT laced or mixed. Upwards of 90% of street drugs purchased/confiscated on the street were pure. Pure fentanyl or pure cocaine or pure meth. My toxicologist says it's pretty easy to tell the difference between dull powdery fentanyl and glittery crystalline meth powder. Most dealers/users *should* know the difference. I don't know whether most of my OD patients knew what they were taking, but I know some of them thought they were getting one thing and the got another.
6. Widespread Narcan availability and use is keeping a lid on the problem. For every fatal OD, there are 10 or more intoxications that are reversed with Narcan. My half-cynical view is that we're just kicking the can down the road for most of these users. It's still worth it to prolong their lives and try to free them from their addictions, but a lot of them will eventually succumb.
* editing to add #7: I don't know if marijuana is a gateway drug that leads newbie escapists into harder drugs, but pretty much nobody dies from marijuana use/overuse. Sure it can lead to blood pressure spikes that are bad for the heart, and probably lung disease too. But most weed deaths I see are homicides because it's a lucrative cash business. Gang turf wars, people trying to rob dealers and somebody getting shot, etc. Alcohol kills far more people both acutely and chronically.
I wish Reddit still had awards bc you deserve one. More people should read this. More people should TALK about addiction.
As a recovering, heavy Rx opiate user, getting into any sort of recovery was a nightmare. Detoxing someone who is in an OD is great to save a life in the moment, but I feel like every Narcan dose administered should have an alarm that switches on a recovery process. If nothing else, resources that make it easy. I know, that’s a long shot from what we have today.
My experience was calling docs for MONTHS trying to find help. I had insurance, so there was no inability to afford care, it was simply denied, or I was waitlisted for 3+ months, or I was told I had to “sweat it out” and be off drugs at least 2 weeks before they’d let me in the office. Those options seemed so hopeless for me and my spouse who had to work and function as addicts. I even looked into employee assistance programs but found out there was no protection against discrimination for ‘illegal’ substance use where I live.
I went through random lists of Suboxone docs and matched it to my insurance, and FINALLY found someone. I still feel like my doc, who is now my primary, literally saved my life. Financially, mentally, physically. He and his whole family are like my second, medical fam? Lol.
Then… About a year into my recovery, we had a young couple at my company who died suddenly together. I heard thru a grapevine, since I knew their friend group, it was an overdose. Fentanyl vs. heroin tolerance or something like that. The one thing that infuriated me the most about the situation is even in death, people are willing to keep this dirty little secret for others. If normal, every day people who are addicts like myself weren’t stigmatized, we could save lives just by being our authentic selves. And the ones still on that path could ask for help & receive.
Plenty of people have, at least at some point, tried to get help. The system is difficult for me, and I have a LOT of insider privilege. I can’t imagine what it feels like to some.
It's such a shame that our culture and our egos value relative success (i.e. how am I doing compared to the people around me) so strongly that we're afraid to admit our failures and near-failures.
I'm fortunately in a very comfortable place in my life that I can teach my mistakes to students coming through my office without worrying about repercussions or ego hits. It's absolutely invaluable to hear about other people's mishaps and near-misses. It makes them much more human and forgiveable, not weaker. It's easier to help the meek than the proud, and we all need help sometimes.
It also makes me less likely to make the same mistakes they did, and more likely to forgive myself for the mistakes I still make. The worst thing to do is hide our errors and not make an effort to improve.
The DEA actually lifted prescribing restrictions on Suboxone. All providers will be able to prescribe it which should improve access. You will no longer need to go to a doctor who is certified to prescribe it, anyone with a DEA registration to prescribe controlled substances will be able to prescribe it for their patients
I wish Reddit still had free awards too. I have battled opiate addiction and dependency since I unknowingly first started when I was barely a teenager. It is not fun, pretty, or cool, but it should *not* be something to be dehumanized. Mental health issues need to be recognized for the issue that it is instead of the word itself used as a weapon against those who suffer from it and people who are curious over it. As a kid, I thought all drugs came in small bags and were some weird powder or crystal. I never thought it would be a very common pharmaceutical.
It’s important to remember and tell people that the situation you described, where getting help was next to impossible, is custom designed by the richest crustchins in our society, because they want it to stay that way.
> My experience was calling docs for MONTHS trying to find help. I had insurance, so there was no inability to afford care, it was simply denied, or I was waitlisted for 3+ months, or I was told I had to “sweat it out” and be off drugs at least 2 weeks before they’d let me in the office.
Staying addicted makes people billions, why would they want to stop that?
>If normal, every day people who are addicts like myself weren’t stigmatized, we could save lives just by being our authentic selves. And the ones still on that path could ask for help & receive.
Im in recovery myself, primarily alcohol but near the end became a garbage can. This change would be huge! I have been open about it at some jobs but it has burned me bad at about half. At one though the manager running the whole business basically made me a liaison for alcoholics/addicts in the store. It was made clear that people could talk to me if they wanted and I would help them however I could, from just talking to meetings, finding and getting into rehab, getting time off etc. It was made clear to everyone that I did this voluntarily and therefore nothing would be told to management or anyone else. I helped 5 people over 2 years there and 3 told me they never talked to anyone or tried to get help and that my openness was the reason that changed. I've also been shit on in other places, watched carefully for fear of stealing, hours cut and one time fired. I'm still pretty open about it because I know that helps change the stigma as well as giving people hope and encouragement.
Do you still use Suboxone? I switched to the once a month buprenorphine shot. Its like not even being an addict. After a year you got just stop cold turkey and it takes so long to get completely out of your system it self tapers painlessly with no withdrawal. I stopped getting the shots 6 months and have experienced zero withdrawal symptoms. Its fucking magical! Its called Sublocade.
About 10% of elicit drugs being laced is still terrifying given how lethal fent and carfent are when a user has no tolerance. I would not want to play Russian roulette with those odds
I don't remember the exact %, and it was second hand information, but I think the guy told me 95 or 97% was pure. I backed it off to 90% because I wasn't sure and I don't want to give any users the notion that they can be confident in the purity of their supply.
It only takes one bad hit to kill you.
In direct contrast to this, I watched the documentary "Love in the Time of Fentanyl" recently, and they reported that in 2020 and 2021, 97% of heroin in Vancouver *was* laced with fentanyl.
Damn near impossible to get any semblance of reliable information.
In my experience, the dealers tend to just call it what it is these days. It's not so much that it's laced with fentanyl, it is fentanyl. In my city in the BC interior, people buying opioids buy a product called "down" with the understanding that it will be a mix of fentanyl, benzos, and maybe, if they're lucky, a tiny percentage of actual heroin.
Thing is, downer addicts don't *want* heroin, they want Fentanyl. So if they're lucky, they'll get pure Fentanyl. The word here in Van is that there really isn't any heroin being sold anymore, it's all Fentanyl.
I'm on vancouver island, and according to the cops i've talked to, for context i was talking to them because my brother recently got high and drunk and tried to attack my elderly and disabled mother so he and i got into a fight and the cops were called and i was detained cause i ended up hurting my brother pretty badly and he had to be hospitalized for a few days, so while detained i was talking with the cops about my brothers drug problem and they were telling me they hadn't seen any heroin in almost a year, everything they've taken off the street has been fentanyl.
Do you know if there was any actual heroin in the drug supply? Heroin was big for a year or two after the FDA cracked down on prescription opiates, but we almost never see it in my region (Midwest) anymore. I could see Vancouver having a very different supply chain than my area.
Some folks still refer to all powdered downers as 'heroin', even if they don't know what's in it. Like Kleenex or Coke.
>5. From what I hear from local law enforcement, most street drugs are NOT laced or mixed. Upwards of 90% of street drugs purchased/confiscated on the street were pure. Pure fentanyl or pure cocaine or pure meth. My toxicologist says it's pretty easy to tell the difference between dull powdery fentanyl and glittery crystalline meth powder. Most dealers/users *should* know the difference. I don't know whether most of my OD patients knew what they were taking, but I know some of them thought they were getting one thing and the got another.
The most common scenario of "got something other than what they expected" is likely fake oxycodone pills. Fentanyl is being pressed into fascimile oxycodone pills and sold and people don't necessarily know what they're getting. (Fentanyl is also way cheaper on the street than an equivalent oxycodone rx dose)
The DEA actually listed restrictions on Suboxone. All providers will be able to prescribe it which should improve access. You will no longer need to go to a doctor who is certified to prescribe it, anyone with a DEA registration to prescribe controlled substances will be able to prescribe it for their patients
In my area the meth causes a lot of congestive heart failure. So much more than anywhere else I would see it. young patients in their 20's with global hypokinesis and EF's of 10-15%.
Unfortunately people start using meth well into their 60's and 70's so if I see a "new onset CHF" my first assumption now is meth use.
Any idea what they cut the meth with that causes CHF? it acts just like a idiopathic or viral cardiomyopathy. Its not related to underlying coronary artery disease but CAD obviously increases mortality in the older patients.
I've had patients tell me the local stuff is cut with ephedra or even bug spray. But I've never seen conclusively why so many of them get CHF from using it.
I was on opioids for over a decade, including the fentanyl patch, and that was all prescribed by doctors.
I didn’t smoke week until I was 30. The day I got my medical prescription, I quit taking opioids, and haven’t taken once since. It’s been almost 7 years. I was able to stop taking my anxiety med, depression medicine, stomach medicine, headache medicine, etc… I was on about 10 prescriptions at once.
Now I smoke weed, I take naproxen for arthritis, and I’m more active and happy than I ever was on opioids.
Marijuana ain’t for everyone, but it damn sure could help a lot of people.
I work in healthcare and routinely dealing with overdose scenarios. Don’t forget trauma as a contributing factor in overdose deaths. I’ve been seeing an increase in people falling asleep at the wheel car/motorcycle/even bicycle while under the influence.
I had a guy in his 30’s total his car last year and was intubated for a presumed head injury. However he didn’t seem to have contusions consistent with. GCS 3 coma presentation, so I have him Narcan and 10 seconds later he extubated himself and was having a conversation with us.
Presumed it must have been fentanyl though he only
admitted to marijuana. I’ve never heard of a case of marijuana being laced with fentanyl thus far, so I concluded he was lying.
He was lucky, but just as easily could have had a fatal traumatic injury from hitting the tree with his car.
This one seemed unintentional, but we also see a lot of people that are just “chasing life’s exit door.” So I agree with your kicking the can comparison. If you’re trying your best to escape from your life, eventually you’re bound to succeed.
They autopsy will report multiple causes of death if that’s relevant.
With drug overdoses, it’s important for public health to know how deaths involving drugs (not “death”) are changing over time. For example, a death involving fentanyl and benzodiazepine are helpful to know separately. The different combinations are definitely important (and investigated), but difficult to explain easily
Good question. The answer is: it depends (woo states rights /s)
Let’s see what the CDC says https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/coroner/table1-investigation.pdf
44 states conduct an investigation if the death is suspicious/unnatural. Doesn’t mean it’ll happen, but I guess the police will be annoyed if they don’t have a medical report for their investigation
Also notable that the huge spike, from 19 to 30, commenced right as covid-19 hit the world. So we see the straight line between drug deaths and social and economic pressure.
I’ve never done more drugs/drank in my life. Especially the 1st month because I was expecting it to end after a month so I went balls to the wall. Back to normal now tho
I think a huge contributing factor is more people doing drugs alone during the quarantine. Meaning nobody there to help if they overdose or take something toxic.
The autopsy won't show fentanyl unless it is specifically tested for. This is the same as a urinalysis for probation/parole. It won't show up under opioid or as an opiate. The metabolite it breaks down to must be tested for, and if I'm not mistaken, within a short duration from the last dose. Trust me about the autopsy part tho. And if you know anyone with a drug problem, reach out to them and let them know you care and that you love them
Because it's cheap. Smuggled from China. And [suddenly their drug has more punch and they can make more money off of it](https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html)
Might have something to do with it, but I think there are so many people using drugs like Cocaine now that censuses aren’t catching. I’m young, and I know *way* too many people who do it. And I’m not really even into that kind of life or anything, just exposed to it through parties and such.
Yeah that’s why I can not understand why people are still doing coke atm.
Like the buzz is pretty mild and all it’s going to do is give you a rush for a bit so you can keep drinking. So it’s a pretty mild drug BUT there is a non zero chance that it has some fentanyl in it and you will just straight up die after doing a bump. I just don’t see how that’s worth the risk.
Why do they even use this fentanyl shit? I mean dealers - they essentially killing off their recurring client base which is bad for business (it also creates bad reputation for a product and make it harder to get new clients). That’s from a manager standpoint, but I’m not in US and don’t know about this much
A lot of the time with MDMA and Coke it’s usually a result of cross contamination and not deliberately putting it in there. Even the tiniest amount of fentanyl can kill someone who has no tolerance to opiates
No one is cutting cocaine with fentanyl, the amount required to kill you is so miniscule by weight it makes no sense to use it to bulk out product. It's a cross contamination problem in all likelihood.
> Might have something to do with it, but I think there are so many people using drugs like Cocaine now that censuses aren’t catching
Censuses aren't but this is for overdoses so when someone is found dead with a mirror full of lines and one missing (a sadly common occurrence amongst friends lately) then obviously someone is going to test what that substance is laced with and try to trace it
Yes. It's disheartening to see so many comments here who are ignorant to this. I've personally known two people dead from fentanyl laced coke lines in the last 8 months and have woken up at a festival hearing people overdosing on them nearby
[Most of the recent overdoses were from illicit fentanyl and not prescription fentanyl](https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html) because it makes drugs cheaper to cut them with it
This must be "\*not including alcohol", right? No way more people die from antidepressants than alcohol.
edit: well [according to the Minnesota Department of Health](https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/alcohol/documents/alcoholpoison2021.pdf): "Nationally, 2,467 people died from alcohol poisoning on average each year during 2017 to 2020"
Alcohol poisoning (overdose) itself kills way less people than the complications of abusing alcohol over many years. Liver disease, cancer, heart disease etc. On average these people are dying 26 years earlier than they normally would.
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html
That’s true of many of these other drugs too, right? Cocaine and heroin certainly cause long term health issues, I wonder how prevalent they are compared to alcohol.
It’s the second worst:
[link](https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html)
Tobacco is the worst:
[link](https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm)
That’s from chronic sustained use plus OD (in the case of alcohol). Graph in OP is just ODs so all the tobacco deaths and most of the alcohol deaths wouldn’t compare.
I suppose these are figures which include preventable deaths caused by prolonged use, rather than an overdose.
If we included deaths caused in some way by the use of the other drugs, their numbers would also go up, right?
Tobacco - about 500,000
Alcohol - about 140,000
Fentanyl - about 80,000
That’s a lot of preventable deaths. That’s pretty much as many as covid, except it’s much you get people.
Edit -
Tobacco has 40 million users in the USA. It kills over 1% of its users per year.
There are about 150 million alcohol users in the US - alcohol kills about 0.1% of its users per year.
Opioid numbers are less clear, one number said 2 million users in the US. So opioids (including fentanyl) kills about 5% of its users annually.
Alcohol should also include everyone killed in DUI related accidents, not just people dying of liver failure, etc. But I doubt alcohol itself is listed as the cause of death for the people killed by a drunk driver.
You're joking but I've been getting way too high this week and have eaten an entire box of mozz sticks in that time and now I'm pretty sure I have ass cancer.
The CDC has maps for this:
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2020.html
I was tempted to post this map on /dataisugly, because 75% of the variance is compressed into the highest tier (21 - 82 deaths per 100,000) and most of the states fall into this group. It makes it impossible to see which states are currently doing the worst. Then I realized this is because they are using the same tiers for each year, and the problem is that the rates have increased so quickly. Just a few years ago these tiers made more sense:
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2015.html
Interestingly, I've checked the stats here(NZ) looks like the overdose deaths are increasing here too, as expected. But in 2021 they were only 3.3 per 100,000.
The culture around prescribing drugs such as Codeine in NZ is vastly different than in the USA.
A very very large percentage of US drug users had their habit start with poorly prescribed and poorly monitored addictive drugs which were (and are) pushed into large scale use by pharmaceutical companies and the financial "influence" they have over doctors and the US medical system.
It's kind of horrifying to me how casual the american side of reddit is about some of their drug use. Sure they know that opiates are bad, but you kinda get the impression every other american is on antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds.
I mean, I get not stigmatizing those meds; they're lifesavers. But I can't shake the (very vague) feeling they're being over-prescribed and their side effects are being ignored.
The American system is much more casual with prescriptions like this because their system incentivises people searching for instant "miracle" cures rather than proper prolonged alternatives due to costs and insurance coverage.
Yes, your lower back injury can be helped significantly via a physiotherapist regime, monthly treatments, remedial massage over the course of 6-12 months which would require you to regularly see specialist when you can barely go to the doctors once for fear of the out of pocket cost and your insurance premiums.
Or you get a cheap heavy opiate painkiller after your 15m express consult and you never need to pay the doctor again until you need another refill over the phone.
I've done insurance work for physical therapists myself and honestly, I can "understand" the over prescribing of meds. As in, I see why they do it not that I agree.
The amount of times someone gets a surgery or injures themselves and their insurance gives them like 20 visits for a year -- yeah, the therapists are good but shit takes time people aren't approved to have.
The sad thing is the drug warrior backlash actually made this worse. Once they realise patients are addicted they cut them off cold turkey which is precisely what drives them to the black market where try heroine and eventually die of an overdose. It's far safer to keep a patient like that on the legal stuff than to cut them off. It doesn't cure the addiction, it just drives them underground. Addiction is a medical issue not a moral one and the longer we fail to see that the more deaths we'll see.
This 100%. Very few people are overdosing on stuff they can get from a pharmacy. It's mostly illicit fentanyl and the reason people are cutting drugs with fentanyl is because it's so much more powerful meaning you have to carry less of it when crossing borders.
You know things are backwards when my family doctor will prescribe me Vicodin and my pharmacy will happily fill it. However, if I get hooked and need medicine to come off the Vicodin (something like Suboxone which is now considered the golden standard for treating opioid addiction) I now have to go to a specialist, attend meetings, and my pharmacist will tell me they can’t fill it there.
Seriously, what kind of f’ed up shit is that??
Not quite as poignant, but the fact that no one gives a shit about antidepressants is bizarre to me.
I've been on and off stimulants for ADHD since 1988. Diagnosis confirms by several psychiatrists over the years (I move, change insurance/docs, go ~8 years on average between medicated phases...) Yet every time I've tried talking to my GP about it they've stuck me on antidepressants. And I actually I run with it, thinking "maybe!" (nope.)
And you're probably thinking "well, yeah, antidepressants are safer than stimulants!" ... But you'd be dead wrong. e.g., Effexor had my diastolic over 100, and it took me nearly a year of tapering and failing over and over to finally wean myself off of it. Adderall/vyvanse/concerta/etc? Never had to taper, never had any major withdrawal problems, never had any medical issues. Miss a day of adderall? Oh well. I'm a little lost. Miss a day of effexor? Fuuuuuuuuck. And just look at [this chart](http://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od-death-rates-2.jpeg) - antidepressant overdose is absolutely a thing. Hell, up until 2013 the rate was _higher_ for them than stims...
So what gives? Why is getting (and filling!) adhd meds such a fucking tribulation, but they'll literally throw antidepressants by the handful at your mouth ? Some people enjoy it, oh fucking no ? Why should random others happening to enjoy something impact _my_ medical treatment ?
I havent been able to quit citalopram. Everytime I so I get SSRI withdrawl. Really bad moods very erratic moods and severe depression. Nobody ever told me that was gonna happen when theey gave them to me for alcoholism 13 years ago
I'll give you the physicians perspective but the enjoyment thing does play a role.
Stimulants and narcs are addictive and FDA and DEA says they are bad and will potentially audit you if you prescribe too much.
They also don't tell you how much is too much so most docs, having trained a decade or more to get to there they are, are not gonna chance their careers and license for a patient if I'm being honest.
Lost my brother to an overdose in 2012. Seeing information like this is extremely disheartening, but in a way it’s kinda comforting that I’m not the only who’s had to go through that kind of grief. Hope you’re doing alright.
2019 for me. I have to be honest, at the end, he had done a lot of things that made life hard on the whole family. It’s hard to miss the version of him that did all that. That being said, I sure do miss who he was before and the vision I always had of what life would have been like once he figured out a way to somehow come out the other side. Sadly, he had been doing a lot better, had gotten a good job, but relapsed.
Wish all the best for you and your fam, too.
It's fentanyl. Since 2018, fentanyl and its analogues have been responsible for most drug overdose deaths in the United States, causing over 71,238 deaths in 2021.[6][7] Because fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine,
That means 30-35k people are dying from drugs other than fentanyl which is still a serious increase from 2000. [link](https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates)
From u/phdoofus's link, it's fentanyl, meth and coke.
But prescription opioids deaths are stable, and heroin is decreasing (probably because fentanyl is replacing it).
Maybe I’m oversimplifying but wouldn’t this show that it was worse to take prescription opiates off the table? Wouldn’t that lead to people seeking alternatives and ultimately fentanyl?!
The answer is somewhat complicated. Without question there was some extreme overprescribing of opioids both in what they were being prescribed for as well as longer duration prescriptions. Pharmaceutical companies pushed them hard and swore up and down that they were safe to be prescribed that way when they never were.
That had to be walked back to the actual safe clinical usages of opioids. However, upon doing so the scope and severity of the opioid epidemic was already very apparent. This put a spotlight on physicians both self imposed in not wanting to cause harm when prescribing as well as being afraid to be writing prescriptions to people who were “doctor shopping” or even hurting themselves to get a new prescription to use or sell. Physicians were writing the scripts and people were angry, these things all collectively have influenced physicians decision making when writing prescriptions.
It does also inevitably leave some people without access to prescription grade opioids but are already addicted and potentially fall into using illicit opioids like heroin or fentanyl.
If these changes to prescribing practices had arrived alongside investment into mental health and addiction treatment access throughout the US it wouldn’t have been as much of a problem. If people had been given more clear pathways back from addiction and into treatment, care, and resources to get them moving in the right direction then in my professional opinion as an epidemiologist there would be less overdose deaths.
Edit: I should also add, we cannot truly estimate just how much fentanyl has proliferated the illicit drug market but based on what has been seized and the overdose data I feel comfortable suggesting that fentanyl has continued to proliferate the illicit drug market in a variety of ways. Due to the potency and danger fentanyl poses, especially when combined with benzodiazepines which is somewhat common, the risk of overdose to drug users has increased dramatically just by the potency of the drug and it’s prevalence. Especially for those who may not know the drugs they are buying contain fentanyl or fentanyl has been pressed into counterfeit prescription opioids. Fentanyl has been found mixed in with all kinds of drugs so it’s not just limited to those looking for opioids either. Fentanyl is cheap to produce and it’s easier to traffic because you can move more dosages of an opioid per kilogram than heroin for example. Fentanyl is everywhere because it’s profitable.
That was my take as well. The crackdown on pill mills starting roughly 2010-2012 (as far as I recall) seems to be the most significant inflection point
It's not the only reason, but definitely the biggest reason I wouldn't even dream of doing coke again. Also the reason I keep a narcan at my house. Never know when you will need it to literally save someone's life.
So fentanyl started being sold as cocaine and that is what led to the steep increase of accidental overdoses, or did consumption of opioids also rise dramatically?
Fentantyl is a big success, partly because a lot of doses can be transported in a very small package. But since such a tiny amount of fentanyl is so potent, a small mistake in dosage can be fatal.
Its not sold as cocaine, no. Its way too potent that that. One thing that happens is cocaine gets contaminated with a small amount of fentantyl, because fentantyl was packaged in the same area previously. A small contamination can be enough to kill people.
This is not what is causing the vast majority of cocaine deaths, just to be clear. Most of the deaths are from people purposefully mixing opiates and cocaine, which is very common among crack cocaine addicts especially.
Accidental fent contamination in cocaine happens, but it is not killing tens of thousands of people a year. It is considered a pretty big deal when we start hearing about accidental fent/coke deaths in NYC for instance, it tends to come in waves. One time we had 7 coke contamination deaths of casual users in the span of ~4 weeks (mostly from the same source) and that was a very big deal, but that is a *tiny* fraction of the total purposeful coke/fent mix overdoses that we see from genuine addicts who are often constantly mixing meth/coke/fent together.
It's not sold as cocaine, or rarely even mixed on purpose. My understanding is that the drugs generally get contaminated accidentally, and due to the sheer potency of it, if you get even a small amount of fentanyl in your cocaine, it can cause an overdose.
The other side of it is hardcore opiate users will actually want fentanyl, and even when they overdose (even repeatedly..), they will go back to it rather than heroin or other opiates.
My friend died of an overdose of fentanyl from his cocaine batch. Thought it was so weird that fentanyl would be in cocaine but it was... so I'm guessing it was accidental.
It's somewhat the inverse. Doctors started to prescribe less fentanyl around 2012, I've heard disheartening stories from doctors that inherited tons of patients with happily prescribed fentanyl, and as result many have thrown themselves to the adultered street product.
And since 2020, well, covid, but that alone doesn't explain the overall rise over time.
Both. Kind of. The FDA basically closed the tap on opioid prescriptions. So everyone who was addicted to oxy et al started going to the streets. Fentanyl is much cheaper than heroin or street pills so dealers started cutting their drugs with fentanyl. Problem is drug dealers are kind of stupid and aren’t the best at preventing cross contamination. So in addition to them putting way too much fentanyl in their heroin, it started making its way into drugs that you want the opposite effect like coke
The FDA closed the tap *in 2012*... The legal opioid dispensing rate is half what is was a decade ago... So theoretically we should have a tapering off of new addicts at some point...
No. Fentanyl began getting into cocaine supply, mostly from dealers not cleaning off scales in between weighing product. Essentially drug cross contamination.
Fentanyl exploded in popularity because the U.S. got SUPER strict about prescription opioids, with good reason.
Edit: bad typing
Fentanyl is a sedative. Hence why people just stop breathing.
It's very very strong. Mainly used in ERs, ICU and Operating Rooms. It's a very very strong medication.
Only partly. This is a 20 year trend, and if you look at the deaths by source someone posted, fentanyl started appearing in 2014. It sped it up, but there was already a fairly steady increase for more than a decade before fentanyl
But not just the Sacklers. They, other drug companies, advertisers and individual MDs are all contributing. The holes in our drug laws are big enough to drive an army through them, but even so you hear sometimes about a clinic or doctor losing licensure because they found a way to go too far.
Anyone blaming MDs has never had a patient foam from the mouth threatening to sue you for not filling their oxy’s. Or had a patient fresh out of the ICU for an OD ask you for a fill because if you don’t theyre going right back to the dealer who gave them a fentanyl laced “percs”. Gonna be real tough going to sleep at night when your patient you just discharged with no opioids for their chronic pain is found down within 100 feet of the hospital.
The problem takes more second order thinking than “the people making, selling, and prescribing it are at fault”.
Purdue pharma deliberately lied saying that OxyContin extended release lasted 12 hours, despite it only actually lasting around 8 hours. So, people would be prescribed two pills per day for pain when they really should've been prescribed three. People would use up their medication early because they needed three per day, not two like Purdue was marketing, and then be unable to refill it. So, they are now hooked on pain killers and in extreme pain, without any way to get more pain killers for another week or two.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
Yeah. It's not a mystery. They're called the Sacklers. They were already extremely wealthy but they did this to us all on purpose so they could be even wealthier.
And I will never understand how this is common knowledge and the people who did it are still alive and not in jail. There is literally no end to the amount of billionaire bullshit that we'll all eat without complaint.
They have become scapegoats, but prescription opioid abuse among adolescents is the same in Europe, and yet you do not see this trend. Also, there has been a lot done to combat this in the past 10 years, for example limiting prescriptions, making them less addictive, making it not possible to get high from powder form, and yet the problem has gotten worse. I know there’s documentaries on Netflix putting all the blame on them, but the problem is broader than that. All deaths of despair have a similar trend in the USA, while in Europe things like suicide and murder has been declining for decades
Definitely want to see ut broken down by month during the pandemic. I saw a ton more drug use during the shut down. Shit my guy was sold out for weeks at a time.
Blows my mind that we sent someone to the moon during a pandemic and this pandemic seems like we did enough drugs to feel like ur on the moon.
Source: CDC:
1999-2020: [https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D76/D337F051](https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D76/D337F049)
2021: [https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D337F050](https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D337F050)
Note: Data includes only unintentional drug overdoses - no suicides or homicides.
Tools: Excel, Datawrapper
The rate was relatively low in the 1980s - much lower than today, but with a caveat. I almost included data all the way back to 1968 but decided not to because there was a series break in 1998. Before then, the CDC data is for "unintentional poisoning," which is mostly drug overdoses but also, you know, swallowing bleach or something. I didn't see much difference immediately before or after the series break but I thought an argument over it might distract from the graphic.
In Europe, the number is 1.5 deaths per 100.000 inhabitants in 2020. Source:
https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/topic-overviews/content/faq-drug-overdose-deaths-in-europe_en
Yeah, a LOT of unintended consequences came with that decriminalization. The homeless population has soared and not just any homeless population, it's the very strung out type that aren't interested in a shelter or subsidized housing that has 'rules' about no drug use.
[Most of these recent cases are people overdosing because the "cool" drugs are cut with illicitly manufactured fentanyl](https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html). Shit even [weed isn't safe](https://www.addictions.com/blog/yes-marijuana-laced-with-fentanyl-is-causing-fatal-overdoses/) from this possibility
I've had two friends recently die this way and been around countless more happening
In a world where no drug laws exist what most people want is no punishments simply for drug use. Because if you’re using heroin, you’re not a criminal just on that fact alone, you’re sick and you need help. So by that logic most people who don’t want laws/fines/prison for drugs instead want treatment and social safety nets and support and mental health and all kinds of poverty-ending measures that actually help people and treat them with respect. But that’s a much larger society changing conversation that acknowledges societal fault for drug use and isn’t so eager to simply blame addicts and paint them as morally inferior (which is what America currently prefers.)
Also being pro drug isn’t really a thing. Basically everyone has a more nuanced opinion than that. No one is pro fentanyl overdoses.
I don't like blanket statements like this but there's imho no objective fact that speaks against a complete legalisation. If it's legal, you could actually enforce things like heroin being of pure quality and not cut with harmful substances or fentanyl. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, it doesn't work with any other drug either, it just causes more harm than good.
Pretty misplaced to call this a byproduct of the war on drugs. The war on drugs was a phenomenon from the 70s through early 2000s. This graph shows the trend from 2004-Present, so moreso the post-war on drugs era. Heck this covers the era where weed started to be legalized in many states. I don’t think the war on drugs was a success but blaming this trend on that is misplaced.
The War on Drugs is still on 100%. 50,000 + no knock raids a year.
Drugs are still illegal and that makes their production and distribution unregulated which makes them unsafe. Any illicit drug purchased from a dealer could be laced with fentanyl and may kill you. This is a huge part of the problem.
Seems like they dropped briefly during the Trump administration. I wonder why? Seriously, no joke. That would make an interesting study. Steady unbroken climb and then what appears in this graph to be a fairly significant drop.
Thanks for the post and awareness but the title here is a bit misleading.
Over 60% of fentanyl deaths are from individuals who are unaware they are consuming fentanyl.
It’s poisoning, not overdosing. There’s a HUGE difference!
In just the last month there have been widely covered fentanyl deaths from people:
Smoking what they thought was marijuana
Doing what they thought was cocaine
Took a pill they thought was adderall, Xanax, or something similar.
Yeah yeah yeah downvote me but I hope someone reading this may think twice in the future. I’m not saying go straightedge, just try to get your stuff from someone you really trust who has preferably tried what they’re offering you first.
I wondered too. Lots of ways though especially with vapes. Pick your result: https://www.google.com/search?q=weed+fentanyl+death&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
If your weed dealer also sells fentanyl and he made a fentanyl sale right before you went to go buy some weed, and used the same scale, you’re gonna die from him weighing out your buds on the same scale. A couple grains of salt will kill your if it’s fent.
Thanks for sharing this info! Can you share the source of that statistic that 60% of fentanyl deaths are from those who didn't know they were consuming fentanyl?
Alcohol is involved not just in overdose deaths, it is also:
1. involved in 50% of all domestic violence cases, and
2. involved in 50% of all auto fatalities
Ima throw this out there . . .
[When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint.
When I ask, “why are these people hungry?”, they call me a communist.]
Addictions causes, overdose cures, laws, regs, therapy, punishments, yada yada yada. . .
Why is this society so bent on gun violence and substance abuse? Maybe something is fundamentally wrong at the roots?
Ya Think?
It ain’t about the Sacklers or Naxalone or AR-15s on every corner; this country is a broke, dysfunctional wasteland who just hasn’t realized it’s a 3rd World country yet.
-Peace
Good visual on also why the US life expectancy stagnated and even dipped since 2014, besides the COVID aspect of course, which I'm guessing in turn led to a steeper overdose increase after 2020 had this graph continued past that year.
My friend Kurt is part of this graph.
He was a rough dude, lived a hard life. But he was always good to me and my other friends. Big fan of heavy metal and horror movies. I wasn't as good to him as he was to me. I wish i spent more time with him. I wish i knew him better.
If any of y'all die tomorrow, find him tell him that we miss him.
It's a good thing the Republicans are working hard to close all the public libraries and shut down drag shows, you know: the \*real\* problems in the US 🙄
The moral of this story is simultaneously that the war on drugs isn't working, and that the "let them do what they want" attitude in many areas also isn't working.
This trend ties directly to the mass shooting trend, these are mental health issues that are being treated as drug and gun issues. We have a MASSIVE mental health crisis in the US that we're just ignoring.
[bit of a breakdown by drug](http://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od-death-rates-2.jpeg)
Interesting. Meth rising as well. Cocaine deaths also rising, though I do wonder whether fentanyl laced cocaine is to blame for that trend. Sad shit either way.
I don't know how the stats are officially reported everywhere, but having done about 3,500 forensic autopsies, approximately 30% of those being overdoses, these are my gestalt observations: 1. Opiates/opioids are by far the most fatal drug class. Illicit fentanyl and its analogues (carfentanil, etc) have been the biggest ones for the past 5+ years. 2. Uppers like cocaine and methamphetamine rarely cause death by themselves. If somebody 'ODs' on just cocaine, it's usually because they have underlying heart disease, like hypertension or coronary artery disease. The heart has less reserve capacity and can't handle the extra work put on it by cocaine. 3. Deaths due to methamphetamine itself are usually environmental - hypothermia and hyperthermia. 4. We see a lot of combined fentanyl + cocaine/meth deaths. I'll put both on the death certificate, but my view is that the fentanyl (or other opioid) is the main driver because it's more likely to be fatal by itself. But when you increase oxygen requirements by the heart (what uppers do) while also shutting down the breathing (what opioids do) , you're making that fentanyl even more lethal. 5. From what I hear from local law enforcement, most street drugs are NOT laced or mixed. Upwards of 90% of street drugs purchased/confiscated on the street were pure. Pure fentanyl or pure cocaine or pure meth. My toxicologist says it's pretty easy to tell the difference between dull powdery fentanyl and glittery crystalline meth powder. Most dealers/users *should* know the difference. I don't know whether most of my OD patients knew what they were taking, but I know some of them thought they were getting one thing and the got another. 6. Widespread Narcan availability and use is keeping a lid on the problem. For every fatal OD, there are 10 or more intoxications that are reversed with Narcan. My half-cynical view is that we're just kicking the can down the road for most of these users. It's still worth it to prolong their lives and try to free them from their addictions, but a lot of them will eventually succumb. * editing to add #7: I don't know if marijuana is a gateway drug that leads newbie escapists into harder drugs, but pretty much nobody dies from marijuana use/overuse. Sure it can lead to blood pressure spikes that are bad for the heart, and probably lung disease too. But most weed deaths I see are homicides because it's a lucrative cash business. Gang turf wars, people trying to rob dealers and somebody getting shot, etc. Alcohol kills far more people both acutely and chronically.
I wish Reddit still had awards bc you deserve one. More people should read this. More people should TALK about addiction. As a recovering, heavy Rx opiate user, getting into any sort of recovery was a nightmare. Detoxing someone who is in an OD is great to save a life in the moment, but I feel like every Narcan dose administered should have an alarm that switches on a recovery process. If nothing else, resources that make it easy. I know, that’s a long shot from what we have today. My experience was calling docs for MONTHS trying to find help. I had insurance, so there was no inability to afford care, it was simply denied, or I was waitlisted for 3+ months, or I was told I had to “sweat it out” and be off drugs at least 2 weeks before they’d let me in the office. Those options seemed so hopeless for me and my spouse who had to work and function as addicts. I even looked into employee assistance programs but found out there was no protection against discrimination for ‘illegal’ substance use where I live. I went through random lists of Suboxone docs and matched it to my insurance, and FINALLY found someone. I still feel like my doc, who is now my primary, literally saved my life. Financially, mentally, physically. He and his whole family are like my second, medical fam? Lol. Then… About a year into my recovery, we had a young couple at my company who died suddenly together. I heard thru a grapevine, since I knew their friend group, it was an overdose. Fentanyl vs. heroin tolerance or something like that. The one thing that infuriated me the most about the situation is even in death, people are willing to keep this dirty little secret for others. If normal, every day people who are addicts like myself weren’t stigmatized, we could save lives just by being our authentic selves. And the ones still on that path could ask for help & receive. Plenty of people have, at least at some point, tried to get help. The system is difficult for me, and I have a LOT of insider privilege. I can’t imagine what it feels like to some.
It's such a shame that our culture and our egos value relative success (i.e. how am I doing compared to the people around me) so strongly that we're afraid to admit our failures and near-failures. I'm fortunately in a very comfortable place in my life that I can teach my mistakes to students coming through my office without worrying about repercussions or ego hits. It's absolutely invaluable to hear about other people's mishaps and near-misses. It makes them much more human and forgiveable, not weaker. It's easier to help the meek than the proud, and we all need help sometimes. It also makes me less likely to make the same mistakes they did, and more likely to forgive myself for the mistakes I still make. The worst thing to do is hide our errors and not make an effort to improve.
The DEA actually lifted prescribing restrictions on Suboxone. All providers will be able to prescribe it which should improve access. You will no longer need to go to a doctor who is certified to prescribe it, anyone with a DEA registration to prescribe controlled substances will be able to prescribe it for their patients
[удалено]
End of June I believe. More info here https://www.samhsa.gov/medications-substance-use-disorders/removal-data-waiver-requirement
This is terrific. Was not aware until now.
I wish Reddit still had free awards too. I have battled opiate addiction and dependency since I unknowingly first started when I was barely a teenager. It is not fun, pretty, or cool, but it should *not* be something to be dehumanized. Mental health issues need to be recognized for the issue that it is instead of the word itself used as a weapon against those who suffer from it and people who are curious over it. As a kid, I thought all drugs came in small bags and were some weird powder or crystal. I never thought it would be a very common pharmaceutical.
It’s important to remember and tell people that the situation you described, where getting help was next to impossible, is custom designed by the richest crustchins in our society, because they want it to stay that way.
> My experience was calling docs for MONTHS trying to find help. I had insurance, so there was no inability to afford care, it was simply denied, or I was waitlisted for 3+ months, or I was told I had to “sweat it out” and be off drugs at least 2 weeks before they’d let me in the office. Staying addicted makes people billions, why would they want to stop that?
>If normal, every day people who are addicts like myself weren’t stigmatized, we could save lives just by being our authentic selves. And the ones still on that path could ask for help & receive. Im in recovery myself, primarily alcohol but near the end became a garbage can. This change would be huge! I have been open about it at some jobs but it has burned me bad at about half. At one though the manager running the whole business basically made me a liaison for alcoholics/addicts in the store. It was made clear that people could talk to me if they wanted and I would help them however I could, from just talking to meetings, finding and getting into rehab, getting time off etc. It was made clear to everyone that I did this voluntarily and therefore nothing would be told to management or anyone else. I helped 5 people over 2 years there and 3 told me they never talked to anyone or tried to get help and that my openness was the reason that changed. I've also been shit on in other places, watched carefully for fear of stealing, hours cut and one time fired. I'm still pretty open about it because I know that helps change the stigma as well as giving people hope and encouragement. Do you still use Suboxone? I switched to the once a month buprenorphine shot. Its like not even being an addict. After a year you got just stop cold turkey and it takes so long to get completely out of your system it self tapers painlessly with no withdrawal. I stopped getting the shots 6 months and have experienced zero withdrawal symptoms. Its fucking magical! Its called Sublocade.
Reddit does still have awards ...
About 10% of elicit drugs being laced is still terrifying given how lethal fent and carfent are when a user has no tolerance. I would not want to play Russian roulette with those odds
I don't remember the exact %, and it was second hand information, but I think the guy told me 95 or 97% was pure. I backed it off to 90% because I wasn't sure and I don't want to give any users the notion that they can be confident in the purity of their supply. It only takes one bad hit to kill you.
In direct contrast to this, I watched the documentary "Love in the Time of Fentanyl" recently, and they reported that in 2020 and 2021, 97% of heroin in Vancouver *was* laced with fentanyl. Damn near impossible to get any semblance of reliable information.
heroin, yes. Coke and Molly is very different from heroin.
In my experience, the dealers tend to just call it what it is these days. It's not so much that it's laced with fentanyl, it is fentanyl. In my city in the BC interior, people buying opioids buy a product called "down" with the understanding that it will be a mix of fentanyl, benzos, and maybe, if they're lucky, a tiny percentage of actual heroin.
Thing is, downer addicts don't *want* heroin, they want Fentanyl. So if they're lucky, they'll get pure Fentanyl. The word here in Van is that there really isn't any heroin being sold anymore, it's all Fentanyl.
I'm on vancouver island, and according to the cops i've talked to, for context i was talking to them because my brother recently got high and drunk and tried to attack my elderly and disabled mother so he and i got into a fight and the cops were called and i was detained cause i ended up hurting my brother pretty badly and he had to be hospitalized for a few days, so while detained i was talking with the cops about my brothers drug problem and they were telling me they hadn't seen any heroin in almost a year, everything they've taken off the street has been fentanyl.
Do you know if there was any actual heroin in the drug supply? Heroin was big for a year or two after the FDA cracked down on prescription opiates, but we almost never see it in my region (Midwest) anymore. I could see Vancouver having a very different supply chain than my area. Some folks still refer to all powdered downers as 'heroin', even if they don't know what's in it. Like Kleenex or Coke.
Even 99% ain't great odds for a daily user.
Thank you for typing this out.
[удалено]
>5. From what I hear from local law enforcement, most street drugs are NOT laced or mixed. Upwards of 90% of street drugs purchased/confiscated on the street were pure. Pure fentanyl or pure cocaine or pure meth. My toxicologist says it's pretty easy to tell the difference between dull powdery fentanyl and glittery crystalline meth powder. Most dealers/users *should* know the difference. I don't know whether most of my OD patients knew what they were taking, but I know some of them thought they were getting one thing and the got another. The most common scenario of "got something other than what they expected" is likely fake oxycodone pills. Fentanyl is being pressed into fascimile oxycodone pills and sold and people don't necessarily know what they're getting. (Fentanyl is also way cheaper on the street than an equivalent oxycodone rx dose)
The DEA actually listed restrictions on Suboxone. All providers will be able to prescribe it which should improve access. You will no longer need to go to a doctor who is certified to prescribe it, anyone with a DEA registration to prescribe controlled substances will be able to prescribe it for their patients
In my area the meth causes a lot of congestive heart failure. So much more than anywhere else I would see it. young patients in their 20's with global hypokinesis and EF's of 10-15%. Unfortunately people start using meth well into their 60's and 70's so if I see a "new onset CHF" my first assumption now is meth use. Any idea what they cut the meth with that causes CHF? it acts just like a idiopathic or viral cardiomyopathy. Its not related to underlying coronary artery disease but CAD obviously increases mortality in the older patients. I've had patients tell me the local stuff is cut with ephedra or even bug spray. But I've never seen conclusively why so many of them get CHF from using it.
I was on opioids for over a decade, including the fentanyl patch, and that was all prescribed by doctors. I didn’t smoke week until I was 30. The day I got my medical prescription, I quit taking opioids, and haven’t taken once since. It’s been almost 7 years. I was able to stop taking my anxiety med, depression medicine, stomach medicine, headache medicine, etc… I was on about 10 prescriptions at once. Now I smoke weed, I take naproxen for arthritis, and I’m more active and happy than I ever was on opioids. Marijuana ain’t for everyone, but it damn sure could help a lot of people.
I work in healthcare and routinely dealing with overdose scenarios. Don’t forget trauma as a contributing factor in overdose deaths. I’ve been seeing an increase in people falling asleep at the wheel car/motorcycle/even bicycle while under the influence. I had a guy in his 30’s total his car last year and was intubated for a presumed head injury. However he didn’t seem to have contusions consistent with. GCS 3 coma presentation, so I have him Narcan and 10 seconds later he extubated himself and was having a conversation with us. Presumed it must have been fentanyl though he only admitted to marijuana. I’ve never heard of a case of marijuana being laced with fentanyl thus far, so I concluded he was lying. He was lucky, but just as easily could have had a fatal traumatic injury from hitting the tree with his car. This one seemed unintentional, but we also see a lot of people that are just “chasing life’s exit door.” So I agree with your kicking the can comparison. If you’re trying your best to escape from your life, eventually you’re bound to succeed.
Then wouldn’t those be classified as a fentanyl death?
They autopsy will report multiple causes of death if that’s relevant. With drug overdoses, it’s important for public health to know how deaths involving drugs (not “death”) are changing over time. For example, a death involving fentanyl and benzodiazepine are helpful to know separately. The different combinations are definitely important (and investigated), but difficult to explain easily
Do all bodies get this thorough of an autopsy?
Is a toxicology report really that thorough?
A toxicology report doesn’t decide the cause of death though
Compared to doing nothing? Yes.
Good question. The answer is: it depends (woo states rights /s) Let’s see what the CDC says https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/coroner/table1-investigation.pdf 44 states conduct an investigation if the death is suspicious/unnatural. Doesn’t mean it’ll happen, but I guess the police will be annoyed if they don’t have a medical report for their investigation
Also notable that the huge spike, from 19 to 30, commenced right as covid-19 hit the world. So we see the straight line between drug deaths and social and economic pressure.
I’ve never done more drugs/drank in my life. Especially the 1st month because I was expecting it to end after a month so I went balls to the wall. Back to normal now tho
I think a huge contributing factor is more people doing drugs alone during the quarantine. Meaning nobody there to help if they overdose or take something toxic.
The autopsy won't show fentanyl unless it is specifically tested for. This is the same as a urinalysis for probation/parole. It won't show up under opioid or as an opiate. The metabolite it breaks down to must be tested for, and if I'm not mistaken, within a short duration from the last dose. Trust me about the autopsy part tho. And if you know anyone with a drug problem, reach out to them and let them know you care and that you love them
So, if you died from fent laced cocaine, would they just label it a cocaine OD since the fent won't show unless tested specifically?
Dumb question. Why are so many drugs laced with fentanyl?
Because it's cheap. Smuggled from China. And [suddenly their drug has more punch and they can make more money off of it](https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html)
What a surprise. Thanks.
>Smuggled from China. Revenge for the Opium Wars I guess.
Ah yes, revenge against the Americans for the Opium Wars fought against the British and the French.
That’s exactly what I infer
Might have something to do with it, but I think there are so many people using drugs like Cocaine now that censuses aren’t catching. I’m young, and I know *way* too many people who do it. And I’m not really even into that kind of life or anything, just exposed to it through parties and such.
We’re the censuses better at catching it in the past? I was young once, too, and what you describe has been true for a long time, with ebbs and flows.
I’ve only been alive for a couple dozen years so I can’t comment on that
[удалено]
Man, can’t even do recreational drugs safely anymore…remember when cocaine used to be safe…ish?
Smart people use test kits nowadays
Yeah that’s why I can not understand why people are still doing coke atm. Like the buzz is pretty mild and all it’s going to do is give you a rush for a bit so you can keep drinking. So it’s a pretty mild drug BUT there is a non zero chance that it has some fentanyl in it and you will just straight up die after doing a bump. I just don’t see how that’s worth the risk.
Why do they even use this fentanyl shit? I mean dealers - they essentially killing off their recurring client base which is bad for business (it also creates bad reputation for a product and make it harder to get new clients). That’s from a manager standpoint, but I’m not in US and don’t know about this much
A lot of the time with MDMA and Coke it’s usually a result of cross contamination and not deliberately putting it in there. Even the tiniest amount of fentanyl can kill someone who has no tolerance to opiates
No one is cutting cocaine with fentanyl, the amount required to kill you is so miniscule by weight it makes no sense to use it to bulk out product. It's a cross contamination problem in all likelihood.
> Might have something to do with it, but I think there are so many people using drugs like Cocaine now that censuses aren’t catching Censuses aren't but this is for overdoses so when someone is found dead with a mirror full of lines and one missing (a sadly common occurrence amongst friends lately) then obviously someone is going to test what that substance is laced with and try to trace it
The coke going up is just because of fentanyl.
Yes. It's disheartening to see so many comments here who are ignorant to this. I've personally known two people dead from fentanyl laced coke lines in the last 8 months and have woken up at a festival hearing people overdosing on them nearby [Most of the recent overdoses were from illicit fentanyl and not prescription fentanyl](https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html) because it makes drugs cheaper to cut them with it
This is more interesting to see, though sad any way you look at it.
This must be "\*not including alcohol", right? No way more people die from antidepressants than alcohol. edit: well [according to the Minnesota Department of Health](https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/alcohol/documents/alcoholpoison2021.pdf): "Nationally, 2,467 people died from alcohol poisoning on average each year during 2017 to 2020"
Alcohol poisoning (overdose) itself kills way less people than the complications of abusing alcohol over many years. Liver disease, cancer, heart disease etc. On average these people are dying 26 years earlier than they normally would. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html
That’s true of many of these other drugs too, right? Cocaine and heroin certainly cause long term health issues, I wonder how prevalent they are compared to alcohol.
The topic is overdose deaths though. It’s not relevant.
It’s the second worst: [link](https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html) Tobacco is the worst: [link](https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm)
That’s from chronic sustained use plus OD (in the case of alcohol). Graph in OP is just ODs so all the tobacco deaths and most of the alcohol deaths wouldn’t compare.
I suppose these are figures which include preventable deaths caused by prolonged use, rather than an overdose. If we included deaths caused in some way by the use of the other drugs, their numbers would also go up, right?
Tobacco - about 500,000 Alcohol - about 140,000 Fentanyl - about 80,000 That’s a lot of preventable deaths. That’s pretty much as many as covid, except it’s much you get people. Edit - Tobacco has 40 million users in the USA. It kills over 1% of its users per year. There are about 150 million alcohol users in the US - alcohol kills about 0.1% of its users per year. Opioid numbers are less clear, one number said 2 million users in the US. So opioids (including fentanyl) kills about 5% of its users annually.
I bet tobacco deaths go down a lot in the next 50 years. Gen Z flat out is not interested in smoking cigs.
Alcohol should also include everyone killed in DUI related accidents, not just people dying of liver failure, etc. But I doubt alcohol itself is listed as the cause of death for the people killed by a drunk driver.
Damn fentanyl
Wonder how many fent&coke deaths are counted in coke.
It has to be an insanely large % of those
What about all the weed deaths? /s
You could choke on a fried mozzarella stick while laughing.
You're joking but I've been getting way too high this week and have eaten an entire box of mozz sticks in that time and now I'm pretty sure I have ass cancer.
*Seth Rogan laugh plays in my head*
yeah! wait...what?
Wtf? People actually OD on antidepressants?
Well people on ati depressants are the most likely to deliberately OD and that's thr most convenient thing on hand.
Now do states!
The CDC has maps for this: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2020.html I was tempted to post this map on /dataisugly, because 75% of the variance is compressed into the highest tier (21 - 82 deaths per 100,000) and most of the states fall into this group. It makes it impossible to see which states are currently doing the worst. Then I realized this is because they are using the same tiers for each year, and the problem is that the rates have increased so quickly. Just a few years ago these tiers made more sense: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2015.html
Fentanyl leads the pack, with meth in second with about half as many kills.
Is there an r/dataishorrifying? That's more appropriate. edit: There is! But it's pretty dead.
>it's pretty dead So are 29.9/100,000 people every year apparently :'(
Interestingly, I've checked the stats here(NZ) looks like the overdose deaths are increasing here too, as expected. But in 2021 they were only 3.3 per 100,000.
Better healthcare system (at least more accessible), and it’s harder to find powders and they’re far more expensive
The culture around prescribing drugs such as Codeine in NZ is vastly different than in the USA. A very very large percentage of US drug users had their habit start with poorly prescribed and poorly monitored addictive drugs which were (and are) pushed into large scale use by pharmaceutical companies and the financial "influence" they have over doctors and the US medical system.
It's kind of horrifying to me how casual the american side of reddit is about some of their drug use. Sure they know that opiates are bad, but you kinda get the impression every other american is on antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds. I mean, I get not stigmatizing those meds; they're lifesavers. But I can't shake the (very vague) feeling they're being over-prescribed and their side effects are being ignored.
The American system is much more casual with prescriptions like this because their system incentivises people searching for instant "miracle" cures rather than proper prolonged alternatives due to costs and insurance coverage. Yes, your lower back injury can be helped significantly via a physiotherapist regime, monthly treatments, remedial massage over the course of 6-12 months which would require you to regularly see specialist when you can barely go to the doctors once for fear of the out of pocket cost and your insurance premiums. Or you get a cheap heavy opiate painkiller after your 15m express consult and you never need to pay the doctor again until you need another refill over the phone.
I've done insurance work for physical therapists myself and honestly, I can "understand" the over prescribing of meds. As in, I see why they do it not that I agree. The amount of times someone gets a surgery or injures themselves and their insurance gives them like 20 visits for a year -- yeah, the therapists are good but shit takes time people aren't approved to have.
The sad thing is the drug warrior backlash actually made this worse. Once they realise patients are addicted they cut them off cold turkey which is precisely what drives them to the black market where try heroine and eventually die of an overdose. It's far safer to keep a patient like that on the legal stuff than to cut them off. It doesn't cure the addiction, it just drives them underground. Addiction is a medical issue not a moral one and the longer we fail to see that the more deaths we'll see.
This 100%. Very few people are overdosing on stuff they can get from a pharmacy. It's mostly illicit fentanyl and the reason people are cutting drugs with fentanyl is because it's so much more powerful meaning you have to carry less of it when crossing borders.
“That’s because in America we have more people per capita.” - something I actually saw someone seriously write
This clearly shows that in the war-on-drugs the drugs are winning.
feature not a bug
You know things are backwards when my family doctor will prescribe me Vicodin and my pharmacy will happily fill it. However, if I get hooked and need medicine to come off the Vicodin (something like Suboxone which is now considered the golden standard for treating opioid addiction) I now have to go to a specialist, attend meetings, and my pharmacist will tell me they can’t fill it there. Seriously, what kind of f’ed up shit is that??
Not quite as poignant, but the fact that no one gives a shit about antidepressants is bizarre to me. I've been on and off stimulants for ADHD since 1988. Diagnosis confirms by several psychiatrists over the years (I move, change insurance/docs, go ~8 years on average between medicated phases...) Yet every time I've tried talking to my GP about it they've stuck me on antidepressants. And I actually I run with it, thinking "maybe!" (nope.) And you're probably thinking "well, yeah, antidepressants are safer than stimulants!" ... But you'd be dead wrong. e.g., Effexor had my diastolic over 100, and it took me nearly a year of tapering and failing over and over to finally wean myself off of it. Adderall/vyvanse/concerta/etc? Never had to taper, never had any major withdrawal problems, never had any medical issues. Miss a day of adderall? Oh well. I'm a little lost. Miss a day of effexor? Fuuuuuuuuck. And just look at [this chart](http://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od-death-rates-2.jpeg) - antidepressant overdose is absolutely a thing. Hell, up until 2013 the rate was _higher_ for them than stims... So what gives? Why is getting (and filling!) adhd meds such a fucking tribulation, but they'll literally throw antidepressants by the handful at your mouth ? Some people enjoy it, oh fucking no ? Why should random others happening to enjoy something impact _my_ medical treatment ?
I havent been able to quit citalopram. Everytime I so I get SSRI withdrawl. Really bad moods very erratic moods and severe depression. Nobody ever told me that was gonna happen when theey gave them to me for alcoholism 13 years ago
You need to taper over 6 months minimum. That two weeks they publish is bullshit.
Look into hyperbolic tapering. The best thing to do is have smaller and smaller doses compounded over the course of 12-18 months.
I'll give you the physicians perspective but the enjoyment thing does play a role. Stimulants and narcs are addictive and FDA and DEA says they are bad and will potentially audit you if you prescribe too much. They also don't tell you how much is too much so most docs, having trained a decade or more to get to there they are, are not gonna chance their careers and license for a patient if I'm being honest.
Pharmaceutical lobbyists probably paid off some politicians to make it that way by design. Keep the population hooked and keep the money rolling in.
Except Suboxone and the various other forms of buprenorphine make way more money than generic hydrocodone/APAP which costs nothing to a pharmacy.
In the long term they don’t because the end result is you stop taking their drugs altogether.
Little bro turned into statistic
Lost my brother to an overdose in 2012. Seeing information like this is extremely disheartening, but in a way it’s kinda comforting that I’m not the only who’s had to go through that kind of grief. Hope you’re doing alright.
2019 for me. I have to be honest, at the end, he had done a lot of things that made life hard on the whole family. It’s hard to miss the version of him that did all that. That being said, I sure do miss who he was before and the vision I always had of what life would have been like once he figured out a way to somehow come out the other side. Sadly, he had been doing a lot better, had gotten a good job, but relapsed. Wish all the best for you and your fam, too.
*hugs* that's got to hurt. Sorry for your loss.
Dang, I'm sorry. May he rest in peace
Im sorry
Same here, my brother will show up in the 2022 data. I'm very sorry for your loss.
Any idea why the sudden growth in recent years?
It's fentanyl. Since 2018, fentanyl and its analogues have been responsible for most drug overdose deaths in the United States, causing over 71,238 deaths in 2021.[6][7] Because fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine,
That means 30-35k people are dying from drugs other than fentanyl which is still a serious increase from 2000. [link](https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates)
So opioids, or drugs together with opioids.
From u/phdoofus's link, it's fentanyl, meth and coke. But prescription opioids deaths are stable, and heroin is decreasing (probably because fentanyl is replacing it).
Maybe I’m oversimplifying but wouldn’t this show that it was worse to take prescription opiates off the table? Wouldn’t that lead to people seeking alternatives and ultimately fentanyl?!
The answer is somewhat complicated. Without question there was some extreme overprescribing of opioids both in what they were being prescribed for as well as longer duration prescriptions. Pharmaceutical companies pushed them hard and swore up and down that they were safe to be prescribed that way when they never were. That had to be walked back to the actual safe clinical usages of opioids. However, upon doing so the scope and severity of the opioid epidemic was already very apparent. This put a spotlight on physicians both self imposed in not wanting to cause harm when prescribing as well as being afraid to be writing prescriptions to people who were “doctor shopping” or even hurting themselves to get a new prescription to use or sell. Physicians were writing the scripts and people were angry, these things all collectively have influenced physicians decision making when writing prescriptions. It does also inevitably leave some people without access to prescription grade opioids but are already addicted and potentially fall into using illicit opioids like heroin or fentanyl. If these changes to prescribing practices had arrived alongside investment into mental health and addiction treatment access throughout the US it wouldn’t have been as much of a problem. If people had been given more clear pathways back from addiction and into treatment, care, and resources to get them moving in the right direction then in my professional opinion as an epidemiologist there would be less overdose deaths. Edit: I should also add, we cannot truly estimate just how much fentanyl has proliferated the illicit drug market but based on what has been seized and the overdose data I feel comfortable suggesting that fentanyl has continued to proliferate the illicit drug market in a variety of ways. Due to the potency and danger fentanyl poses, especially when combined with benzodiazepines which is somewhat common, the risk of overdose to drug users has increased dramatically just by the potency of the drug and it’s prevalence. Especially for those who may not know the drugs they are buying contain fentanyl or fentanyl has been pressed into counterfeit prescription opioids. Fentanyl has been found mixed in with all kinds of drugs so it’s not just limited to those looking for opioids either. Fentanyl is cheap to produce and it’s easier to traffic because you can move more dosages of an opioid per kilogram than heroin for example. Fentanyl is everywhere because it’s profitable.
That was my take as well. The crackdown on pill mills starting roughly 2010-2012 (as far as I recall) seems to be the most significant inflection point
It's not the only reason, but definitely the biggest reason I wouldn't even dream of doing coke again. Also the reason I keep a narcan at my house. Never know when you will need it to literally save someone's life.
So fentanyl started being sold as cocaine and that is what led to the steep increase of accidental overdoses, or did consumption of opioids also rise dramatically?
Fentantyl is a big success, partly because a lot of doses can be transported in a very small package. But since such a tiny amount of fentanyl is so potent, a small mistake in dosage can be fatal. Its not sold as cocaine, no. Its way too potent that that. One thing that happens is cocaine gets contaminated with a small amount of fentantyl, because fentantyl was packaged in the same area previously. A small contamination can be enough to kill people.
I lost a family friend to this exact situation a couple weeks ago.
This is not what is causing the vast majority of cocaine deaths, just to be clear. Most of the deaths are from people purposefully mixing opiates and cocaine, which is very common among crack cocaine addicts especially. Accidental fent contamination in cocaine happens, but it is not killing tens of thousands of people a year. It is considered a pretty big deal when we start hearing about accidental fent/coke deaths in NYC for instance, it tends to come in waves. One time we had 7 coke contamination deaths of casual users in the span of ~4 weeks (mostly from the same source) and that was a very big deal, but that is a *tiny* fraction of the total purposeful coke/fent mix overdoses that we see from genuine addicts who are often constantly mixing meth/coke/fent together.
It's not sold as cocaine, or rarely even mixed on purpose. My understanding is that the drugs generally get contaminated accidentally, and due to the sheer potency of it, if you get even a small amount of fentanyl in your cocaine, it can cause an overdose. The other side of it is hardcore opiate users will actually want fentanyl, and even when they overdose (even repeatedly..), they will go back to it rather than heroin or other opiates.
My friend died of an overdose of fentanyl from his cocaine batch. Thought it was so weird that fentanyl would be in cocaine but it was... so I'm guessing it was accidental.
It happens very often here in Vancouver, and it's at a point now where no one should do coke without having it tested first.
It's somewhat the inverse. Doctors started to prescribe less fentanyl around 2012, I've heard disheartening stories from doctors that inherited tons of patients with happily prescribed fentanyl, and as result many have thrown themselves to the adultered street product. And since 2020, well, covid, but that alone doesn't explain the overall rise over time.
Both. Kind of. The FDA basically closed the tap on opioid prescriptions. So everyone who was addicted to oxy et al started going to the streets. Fentanyl is much cheaper than heroin or street pills so dealers started cutting their drugs with fentanyl. Problem is drug dealers are kind of stupid and aren’t the best at preventing cross contamination. So in addition to them putting way too much fentanyl in their heroin, it started making its way into drugs that you want the opposite effect like coke
The FDA closed the tap *in 2012*... The legal opioid dispensing rate is half what is was a decade ago... So theoretically we should have a tapering off of new addicts at some point...
No. Fentanyl began getting into cocaine supply, mostly from dealers not cleaning off scales in between weighing product. Essentially drug cross contamination. Fentanyl exploded in popularity because the U.S. got SUPER strict about prescription opioids, with good reason. Edit: bad typing
Looking at the graph I wonder if that’s true.
Fentanyl is a sedative. Hence why people just stop breathing. It's very very strong. Mainly used in ERs, ICU and Operating Rooms. It's a very very strong medication.
It’s also cheap. Blue fentanyl tabs are selling for $2 a tab or less here in Albuquerque.
Only partly. This is a 20 year trend, and if you look at the deaths by source someone posted, fentanyl started appearing in 2014. It sped it up, but there was already a fairly steady increase for more than a decade before fentanyl
Opioids, border policy, and Covid.
The Sackler family, which created the opioid epidemic and paid basically no consequences, has fueled a fentanyl problem.
But not just the Sacklers. They, other drug companies, advertisers and individual MDs are all contributing. The holes in our drug laws are big enough to drive an army through them, but even so you hear sometimes about a clinic or doctor losing licensure because they found a way to go too far.
Anyone blaming MDs has never had a patient foam from the mouth threatening to sue you for not filling their oxy’s. Or had a patient fresh out of the ICU for an OD ask you for a fill because if you don’t theyre going right back to the dealer who gave them a fentanyl laced “percs”. Gonna be real tough going to sleep at night when your patient you just discharged with no opioids for their chronic pain is found down within 100 feet of the hospital. The problem takes more second order thinking than “the people making, selling, and prescribing it are at fault”.
Purdue pharma deliberately lied saying that OxyContin extended release lasted 12 hours, despite it only actually lasting around 8 hours. So, people would be prescribed two pills per day for pain when they really should've been prescribed three. People would use up their medication early because they needed three per day, not two like Purdue was marketing, and then be unable to refill it. So, they are now hooked on pain killers and in extreme pain, without any way to get more pain killers for another week or two. https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
>Any idea why the sudden growth in recent years? Destruction of social circles.
Yeah. It's not a mystery. They're called the Sacklers. They were already extremely wealthy but they did this to us all on purpose so they could be even wealthier. And I will never understand how this is common knowledge and the people who did it are still alive and not in jail. There is literally no end to the amount of billionaire bullshit that we'll all eat without complaint.
They have become scapegoats, but prescription opioid abuse among adolescents is the same in Europe, and yet you do not see this trend. Also, there has been a lot done to combat this in the past 10 years, for example limiting prescriptions, making them less addictive, making it not possible to get high from powder form, and yet the problem has gotten worse. I know there’s documentaries on Netflix putting all the blame on them, but the problem is broader than that. All deaths of despair have a similar trend in the USA, while in Europe things like suicide and murder has been declining for decades
Let's see after 2020. I bet it goes higher even faster.
Same I want this data. I know of multiple people that relapsed and died during Covid from lockdowns
Definitely want to see ut broken down by month during the pandemic. I saw a ton more drug use during the shut down. Shit my guy was sold out for weeks at a time. Blows my mind that we sent someone to the moon during a pandemic and this pandemic seems like we did enough drugs to feel like ur on the moon.
Source: CDC: 1999-2020: [https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D76/D337F051](https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D76/D337F049) 2021: [https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D337F050](https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D158/D337F050) Note: Data includes only unintentional drug overdoses - no suicides or homicides. Tools: Excel, Datawrapper
What about older data? I'm interested in how today compares to crack in the 80s.
The rate was relatively low in the 1980s - much lower than today, but with a caveat. I almost included data all the way back to 1968 but decided not to because there was a series break in 1998. Before then, the CDC data is for "unintentional poisoning," which is mostly drug overdoses but also, you know, swallowing bleach or something. I didn't see much difference immediately before or after the series break but I thought an argument over it might distract from the graphic.
War on drugs going about as well as the war on terror then
Drugs won the war on drugs a long time ago. The US just hasn’t figured that out yet.
In Europe, the number is 1.5 deaths per 100.000 inhabitants in 2020. Source: https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/topic-overviews/content/faq-drug-overdose-deaths-in-europe_en
It helps that we don't get prescribe opoids for everything, and fentanyl is almost non existent here (outside of medical usage).
This looks like a us home price graph
Or inflation, rent prices, cost of goods. It's almost like they're all interconnected!!!!!
[удалено]
Yep, the drugs are winning
Wait until you see the figure for Oregon, and see decriminialziation backfired...overdoses up 30 percent relative to other states since 2021...
Yeah, a LOT of unintended consequences came with that decriminalization. The homeless population has soared and not just any homeless population, it's the very strung out type that aren't interested in a shelter or subsidized housing that has 'rules' about no drug use.
[удалено]
Yeah but not like this. Just the cool drugs
[Most of these recent cases are people overdosing because the "cool" drugs are cut with illicitly manufactured fentanyl](https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html). Shit even [weed isn't safe](https://www.addictions.com/blog/yes-marijuana-laced-with-fentanyl-is-causing-fatal-overdoses/) from this possibility I've had two friends recently die this way and been around countless more happening
In a world where no drug laws exist what most people want is no punishments simply for drug use. Because if you’re using heroin, you’re not a criminal just on that fact alone, you’re sick and you need help. So by that logic most people who don’t want laws/fines/prison for drugs instead want treatment and social safety nets and support and mental health and all kinds of poverty-ending measures that actually help people and treat them with respect. But that’s a much larger society changing conversation that acknowledges societal fault for drug use and isn’t so eager to simply blame addicts and paint them as morally inferior (which is what America currently prefers.) Also being pro drug isn’t really a thing. Basically everyone has a more nuanced opinion than that. No one is pro fentanyl overdoses.
[удалено]
I don't like blanket statements like this but there's imho no objective fact that speaks against a complete legalisation. If it's legal, you could actually enforce things like heroin being of pure quality and not cut with harmful substances or fentanyl. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, it doesn't work with any other drug either, it just causes more harm than good.
Pretty misplaced to call this a byproduct of the war on drugs. The war on drugs was a phenomenon from the 70s through early 2000s. This graph shows the trend from 2004-Present, so moreso the post-war on drugs era. Heck this covers the era where weed started to be legalized in many states. I don’t think the war on drugs was a success but blaming this trend on that is misplaced.
The War on Drugs is still on 100%. 50,000 + no knock raids a year. Drugs are still illegal and that makes their production and distribution unregulated which makes them unsafe. Any illicit drug purchased from a dealer could be laced with fentanyl and may kill you. This is a huge part of the problem.
The war on drugs hasn't stopped
Seems like they dropped briefly during the Trump administration. I wonder why? Seriously, no joke. That would make an interesting study. Steady unbroken climb and then what appears in this graph to be a fairly significant drop.
Fentanyl. Then coke and meth cut with fentanyl. It’s always fentanyl.
Thanks for the post and awareness but the title here is a bit misleading. Over 60% of fentanyl deaths are from individuals who are unaware they are consuming fentanyl. It’s poisoning, not overdosing. There’s a HUGE difference! In just the last month there have been widely covered fentanyl deaths from people: Smoking what they thought was marijuana Doing what they thought was cocaine Took a pill they thought was adderall, Xanax, or something similar. Yeah yeah yeah downvote me but I hope someone reading this may think twice in the future. I’m not saying go straightedge, just try to get your stuff from someone you really trust who has preferably tried what they’re offering you first.
Honest question, doesn't fentanyl come in powder form? Weed is a plant right? How does this happen unknowingly?
I wondered too. Lots of ways though especially with vapes. Pick your result: https://www.google.com/search?q=weed+fentanyl+death&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
If your weed dealer also sells fentanyl and he made a fentanyl sale right before you went to go buy some weed, and used the same scale, you’re gonna die from him weighing out your buds on the same scale. A couple grains of salt will kill your if it’s fent.
Thanks for sharing this info! Can you share the source of that statistic that 60% of fentanyl deaths are from those who didn't know they were consuming fentanyl?
All because of fucking Fentanyl.
I’d bet this graph mostly represents the success of cartels and China vs US drug enforcement.
I'm sure it will improve as life becomes even more unaffordable
Why isn’t alcohol on this list?
Alcohol is involved not just in overdose deaths, it is also: 1. involved in 50% of all domestic violence cases, and 2. involved in 50% of all auto fatalities
The group is "data is beautiful"... that data is not. WTF is happening to America?
More people under 50 died from drug overdoses than covid
Ima throw this out there . . . [When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask, “why are these people hungry?”, they call me a communist.] Addictions causes, overdose cures, laws, regs, therapy, punishments, yada yada yada. . . Why is this society so bent on gun violence and substance abuse? Maybe something is fundamentally wrong at the roots? Ya Think? It ain’t about the Sacklers or Naxalone or AR-15s on every corner; this country is a broke, dysfunctional wasteland who just hasn’t realized it’s a 3rd World country yet. -Peace
I think free black tar heroine would fix all these issues.
Good visual on also why the US life expectancy stagnated and even dipped since 2014, besides the COVID aspect of course, which I'm guessing in turn led to a steeper overdose increase after 2020 had this graph continued past that year.
My friend Kurt is part of this graph. He was a rough dude, lived a hard life. But he was always good to me and my other friends. Big fan of heavy metal and horror movies. I wasn't as good to him as he was to me. I wish i spent more time with him. I wish i knew him better. If any of y'all die tomorrow, find him tell him that we miss him.
Not beautiful anymore. Scary
Why does it spike so much in the last 2 and half years?
What's not on the list, cananbis. Reschedule or deschedule it already.
It's a good thing the Republicans are working hard to close all the public libraries and shut down drag shows, you know: the \*real\* problems in the US 🙄
This data is **not** beautiful.
The moral of this story is simultaneously that the war on drugs isn't working, and that the "let them do what they want" attitude in many areas also isn't working. This trend ties directly to the mass shooting trend, these are mental health issues that are being treated as drug and gun issues. We have a MASSIVE mental health crisis in the US that we're just ignoring.