The other crisis: Drug overdoses in the US rose almost 30% last year

The other crisis: Drug overdoses in the US rose almost 30% last year

7/15/21 8:00PM

The other crisis

‍Last year we charted about the tragic rise in drug overdose deaths in the United States. Sadly, the preliminary numbers for 2020 are even worse.

Drug overdose deaths in 2020 rose by almost 30% relative to 2019 — with 93,000 people losing their lives to drugs in the US last year. Almost 70,000 of those, or roughly 75% of the total, were related to overdoses in pain-relieving opioids.

‍Opioid overdoses

‍As pain management became more common in the 1980s and 1990s, painkillers were heavily marketed and — officials claim — often over-prescribed thanks to kickbacks and payments given to doctors for doing so, leading to addiction and overdoses.

A number of pharmaceutical companies have been successfully prosecuted for their roles in the opioid crisis. 3 weeks ago Johnson & Johnson reached a settlement to pay $230m towards treatment and prevention and Purdue Pharma — which made OxyContin painkillers — agreed to pay $8.3bn for its role in the crisis last year.

Those legal successes unfortunately feel like a hollow victory as the opioid crisis has never been worse in America.

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