USA: Overdose Deaths – What Drugs are Killing People?

The US government does not track death rates for every drug, but the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collect information on many commonly used drugs. CDC has a searchable database, Wonder, from which these numbers come. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has graphed them to help the public see what a serious problem our nation faces. We reproduce them here to help spread the word.

Not all of these deaths are due to opioids, as later graphs below will show. Each graph contains a yellow and orange line indicating female (yellow) and male (orange) deaths. The lines end in 2016 because 2017 data are provisional. They will be finalized later this year.

Total drug-related deaths have increased 3.1-fold since 2002.

See total series here.

Some 49,068 Americans died from opioid overdoses last year. These numbers include opioid painkillers, heroin, and illicit opioid synthetics, primarily fentanyl.

Note: These charts are not mutually exclusive so they cannot be summed.

See total series here.

These overdose deaths are up by one-third in just one year (from 2016 to 2027). There has been a 22-fold increase in synthetic opioid deaths since 2002.

Note: These charts are not mutually exclusive so they cannot be summed.

See total series here.

This is a 7.6-fold increase since 2002.

Note: These charts are not mutually exclusive so they cannot be summed.

See total series here.

Since 2010, cocaine deaths have increased 3.5-fold.

Note: These charts are not mutually exclusive so they cannot be summed.

See total series here.

From 2002 to 2016 there was an 8-fold increase in benzodiazepine overdose deaths.

Note: These charts are not mutually exclusive so they cannot be summed.

See total series here.

The number of adults with a marijuana-use disorder has doubled since the early 2000s, and the number who consume pot daily or near-daily has increased nearly 50 percent. This worries public health officials concerned about “increasingly permissive cannabis legislation, attitudes, and lower risk of perception,” as well as “increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users.”

Users or former users describe “lost jobs, lost marriages, lost houses, lost money, lost time. Foreclosures and divorces. Weight gain and mental-health problems,” writes the author of this article in The Atlantic. Perhaps the biggest problem for such users is having to convince others that the problems they are suffering result from their marijuana-use disorders.

Experts worry that the way states are regulating legal marijuana invites such problems. Says Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, “’Here, what we’ve done is we’ve copied the alcohol industry fully formed, and then on steroids with very minimal regulation. The oversight boards of a number of states are the industry themselves. We’ve learned enough about capitalism to know that’s very dangerous.”

Many improvements could be made, including most importantly “listening to and believing the hundreds of thousands of users who argue marijuana use is not always benign.”

Read The Atlantic article here.

Pregnant women with severe nausea and vomiting in their first trimester were nearly four times more likely to use marijuana than those without morning sickness. Those with milder symptoms were twice as likely to use the drug as those with no symptoms.

More than 220,000 pregnant women in northern California completed surveys and submitted urine samples for drug screening in their first trimester. Researchers analyzed these data and also examined the participants’ medical records, looking for diagnoses of mild to severe morning sickness.

Some 2.3 percent of the women had severe nausea and vomiting; another 15.3 percent had milder symptoms. The rest experienced none. Among those with severe symptoms, 11.3 percent used marijuana and among those with mild symptoms, 8.4 percent used the drug compared to 4.5 percent who used marijuana but had no symptoms.

The researchers say they hope their study will encourage clinicians to provide safe and effective medicines to treat morning sickness. They also encourage clinicians to educate pregnant women about the negative effects that using marijuana during pregnancy may have on their babies, noting that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that women use no marijuana during pregnancy and lactation.

Read Live Science article here. Read JAMA Internal Medicine abstract here.

• To inform public policy with the science of today’s marijuana.
• To reduce the unintended consequences of current marijuana policies, such as lifelong stigma due to arrest.
• To prevent the establishment of “Big Marijuana” – and a 21st-Century tobacco industry that would market marijuana to children.
• To promote research of marijuana’s medical properties and produce, non-smoked, non-psychoactive pharmacy-attainable medications.