Fentanyl drove record high drug overdose deaths in 2017

New York Times chart; click on the image to enlarge it.

New numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that drug overdoses killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2017, a record high, and that use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl drove the increase.

Since 2013, the number of overdose deaths associated with fentanyls and similar drugs has grown to more than 28,000, from 3,000." Josh Katz and Margo Sanger-Katz report for The New York Times. "Deaths involving fentanyls increased more than 45 percent in 2017 alone. Overdose rates have been especially high in the Northeast, the Midwest, and mid-Atlantic states.

Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for adults under 55. The increase in drug overdose deaths has been so great that it's contributed to a four-month reduction in the average American's life expectancy; that kind of reduction hasn't been seen since World War II, Katz and Sanger-Katz report.

The federal government's recent efforts to fight the opioid epidemic have focused on prescription abuse, but some public health researchers say that fighting fentanyl requires a different approach. Synthetic drugs tend to be more potent, and therefore deadlier, since small measurement errors can lead to an overdose. "The blends of synthetic drugs also tend to change frequently, making it easy for drug users to underestimate the strength of the drug they are injecting. In some parts of the country, drugs sold as heroin are exclusively fentanyls now," Katz and Sanger-Katz report.

Preliminary data from the CDC indicate that 2017 could be the peak of the overdose epidemic, with nationwide death rates leveling off in early 2018, but it's too soon to tell.

Chinese President Xi Jinping Xi recently agreed to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance and to crack down on illicit shipments of the deadly opioid, but the Chinese have said that before.