MORE Politically INCORRECT Cartoons for April 10, 2018
URL of the original posting site: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4015536/A-grim-tally-soars-More-50-000-overdose-deaths-US.html#ixzz5BAZxMG8E
It comes only days after another report which showed fentanyl, a synthetic opiate which is 40 times stronger than heroin, has become the largest drug threat to the United States, and causes 44 deaths every day. Deaths from fentanyl rose 73 per cent to 9,580.
Overdoses – often accidental – of Oxycontin and Vicodin killed 17,536, an increase of four per cent.
‘I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this. Certainly not in modern times,’ said Robert Anderson, who oversees death statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The ‘war on drugs’ was a term coined by the press in 1971 after President Richard Nixon held a press conference to publicize the growing menace of narcotics flooding the country. In July 1973 the Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA) was set up in a bid to combat drug smugglers and pushers. In the 1980s crack – a highly addictive form of cocaine – created a new generation of drug addicts but deaths began to fall in the 1990s.
But they have been rising steadily since 2001 and heroin in particular has seen a massive spike in the last six years. In February 2014 heroin claimed the life of Hollywood actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who overdosed in the bathroom of his apartment in Manhattan.
But the vast majority of those being killed by heroin and fentanyl are ordinary people in smalltown America.
Statista.com compiled a table comparing drug deaths state by state and it showed that West Virginia was the drug death capital of America with 32.4 per 100,000 people, almost three times the national average. Another Appalachian state, Kentucky, was third on the list.
But opiates are ravaging the entire country and almost every day there are stories and photographs of horrific incidents.
The new numbers were part of the agency’s annual tally of deaths and death rates in 2015. Overall, overdose deaths rose 11 per cent last year, to 52,404. By comparison, the number of people who died in car crashes was 37,757, an increase of 12 per cent.
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