The recent surge in drug overdose deaths shocked even some of the most jaded observers of American addiction: 100,306 dead from April 2020 to April...
, a synthetic opioid that can be 50 times more potent than heroin. When used legally, with a doctor’s prescription, this class of drugs is meant to help people experiencing severe pain caused by cancer and other ailments.to replace or adulterate white powder heroin in the eastern U.S, but it’s increasingly spreading throughout the country, according to the new data.
When comparing July to December 2019 with the same period in 2020, the CDC found that fentanyl-involved deaths rose significantly: in the West, they rose by 93.9% ; in the South, 64.7% ; and in the Midwest, 33.1% ., dealers sometimes mix fentanyl with other drugs, often unbeknownst to the buyers.
There can be deadly consequences when even tiny amounts of fentanyl are mixed with other drugs or when it spreads to new places, says Thomas Stopka, an associate professor with the department of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. What makes it particularly dangerous, he says, is that it’s being used by people who are comparatively “opioid naive.” That is, they haven’t used such a potent opioid before, or they haven’t used opioids at all.
“Fentanyl is even more ubiquitous across the United States. Since the pandemic began, we’ve seen fentanyl appear in many communities where it hadn’t been appearing previously,” he says. “There could be many more people who’ve not been exposed to this potency of opioids.” Over the last few years, opioid overdose deaths have increased rapidly among people with opioid use disorder who rely on illicit drugs like heroin, especially younger white people and in low-income, inner city communities. The surge has affected a growing proportion of
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