USA: Within a year, 100,000 Americans died from drugs

From last year to April this year, more Americans died of an overdose than ever before drugs According to federal data released yesterday, Wednesday, in the US. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted medical care and increased mental health problems, and more deadly drugs flooded the streets.

It recorded a record more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths, and US President Joe Biden called it a “tragic milestone,” an increase of 28.5% from the previous 12 months, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC).

The government has said it will push states to enact laws that would make it easier for people to access naloxone, a drug that could reverse the effects of opioid overdoses.

“No one should die from an overdose, and naloxone is one of the most effective tools we have to save lives,” said Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Biden said in a statement that although the country is fighting the pandemic of the new coronavirus, “We can not ignore this epidemic of loss” from drug overdose deaths.

“Significant tragedy”

Joshua Sarfstein, director of the American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Bloomberg, which deals with addictions and overdoses, said that the peak of drug-related deaths came in the early spring of 2020. expects annual data on drug overdoses to start falling after the July figures, but not so much.

“This is a major tragedy behind the pandemic. “It breaks your heart how many families have suffered from overdoses this year,” Sarfstein said.

The two culprits

Sarfstein added that the rise in drug overdose reflects two factors, first of which is directly related to disorders caused by the pandemic and brought great stress to many people.

“Many programs (against drug addiction) had to close or reduce their hours or otherwise become less accessible during the pandemic. “So although there was a lot more need, there was less access to care in many places.”

The second factor is that substances smuggled on the streets became more deadly. This is largely due to the widespread availability of fentanyl, which can be 100 times more potent than morphine, and is increasingly mixed with other drugs, such as cocaine, without the users’ knowledge, as traffickers seek to enhance their effect. Even small amounts of fentanyl make the drug much more dangerous, reports APE-MPE, citing Reuters.

Sarfstein and other health experts are urging governments at all levels to take the drug overdose as seriously as they did with the COVID-19 epidemic and to invest more in treatments that have been shown to work, such as naloxone, and in real-time data collection, which identifies when and where drug overdoses occur.

Figures in July showed that there was a 30% increase in drug overdoses last year, as pandemics trying to stem the pandemic made it difficult to treat and smugglers smuggled more fentanyl drugs.

The states with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths were Vermont (70%), followed by West Virginia (62.2%) and Kentucky (54.5%). California, the most populous state in the United States, saw this percentage increase by almost 47.8%.