Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999–2020

Abstract

This report uses the most recent data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to update statistics on deaths from drug overdose in the United States, showing rates by demographic group and by specific types of drugs involved (such as opioids or stimulants), with a focus on changes from 2019 to 2020.

Retracted: Longitudinal Study on Deterrent Effect of Drug-Induced Homicide Law on Opioid-Related Mortality Across 92 Counties and the District of Columbia in the U.S.

“…After screening for valid data, 92 counties across 10 states and the District of Columbia were left for the current study. Following the definition by the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), opioid-related death is defined as the following multiple cause of death codes including opium, heroin, natural and semisynthetic opioids, methadone, synthetic opioids other than methadone or other and unspecified narcotics (T40.0, T40.1, T40.2, T40.3, T40.4, T40.6) among the cases with the following underlying causes of death including unintentional, suicide, homicide, or undetermined intent death (Hedegaard, Warner, & Miniño, 2017;Hedegaard, Miniño, & Warner, 2020). The same crude rates of opioid-death between two counties should be viewed differently if those counties have significantly contrasting structures of age-graded population (Bachhuber, Saloner, Cunningham, & Barry, 2014;Wilson et al, 2020).…”

An ecological study of temporal trends in ‘deaths of despair’ in England and Wales

“…England and Wales do not share the same policy history as the USA, though it has also experienced historic increases in opioid use in the population [33] with the increase in avoidable drug poisoning mortality raising a mixture of hypotheses around an ageing cohort and increased morbidity as well as failures in delivery of effective drug treatment [7,9]. Furthermore, increased access to street fentanyl has been implicated in the increases in drug-related deaths in the USA [34,35] whereas in the UK, fentanyl is still rarely implicated in UK drug deaths [36,37] though other forms of poly-drug use with opioids have increased, such as street benzodiazepines and gabapentinoids [38,39]. Future trends in drug poisoning mortality should be monitored closely for the possible impact of street fentanyl.…”

Evaluación de las características de la prescripción de opioides mayores otorgados por las farmacias de un Hospital General Latinoamericano

“…Las estadísticas son preocupantes ya que algunos estudios describen que entre 90-150 estadounidenses mueren por sobredosis de opioides cada día (8,9) . Los centros para el control y la prevención de enfermedades (CDC por sus siglas en inglés) de los Estados Unidos, estimaron que en 2016 ocurrieron más de 60,000 muertes por sobredosis, generando desde entonces un aumento dramático del doble de muertes debido a los opioides sintéticos (10) .…”