# 147

Overdose deaths leading cause is not heroin nor is it pharmaceutically prepared fentanyl...it is illicit fentanyl made in clandestine labs and sold without anyone performing qualitative, or quantitative, analysis.  

"The federal government just put out new statistics for drug overdose deaths in 2016 — and they are very, very grim.

The preliminary figures from the National Center for Health Statistics suggest that there were more than 64,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016. And in a shocking — but not quite surprising — reveal, synthetic opioids like fentanyl overtook both heroin and prescription painkillers in terms of overdose deaths.

Based on the National Center for Health Statistics figures, traditional opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin and Percocet, were involved in about 14,400 overdose deaths in 2016, and heroin was involved in more than 15,400. Non-methadone synthetic opioids like fentanyl, meanwhile, were linked to more than 20,100 overdose deaths. Remaining overdose deaths involved other drugs, such as cocaine (which also increased).

If these numbers hold up (and final figures will come out later this year), it solidifies the opioid epidemic as America’s deadliest overdose crisis ever. In comparison, more than 58,000 US soldiers died in the entire Vietnam War, nearly 55,000 Americans died of car crashes at the peak of such deaths in 1972, more than 43,000 died due to HIV/AIDS during that epidemic's peak in 1995, and nearly 40,000 died of guns during the peak of firearm deaths in 1993.

The numbers show the evolution of the opioid epidemic. It originally began as a crisis rooted in the dramatic overprescription of opioids. But over time, many users moved onto other opioids, particularly heroin and fentanyl — the latter of which is especially potent and deadly."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/5/16255040/opioid-epidemic-overdose-death-2016