Confirming fears among public health officials, overdose deaths in the US sharply worsened again during the pandemic, killing more than 107,000 people last year, according to preliminary CDC estimates released Wednesday.
Overdose deaths in the US have been on the rise for over two decades, taking the lives of more than 1 million people since 2000. The increase in 2021, though, is 15% higher than the previous year, setting a new record, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
“It is unacceptable that we are losing a life to overdose every five minutes around the clock,” Rahul Gupta, US drug czar and head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in a statement sent to BuzzFeed News.
The mounting deaths explain why the Biden administration is moving away from the longtime “War on Drugs” approach to deterring drug use through criminalization and toward wider availability of treatment programs and harm reduction measures, such as making the overdose-reversing drug naloxone more widely available, Gupta said.
The latest sharp increase and wave of deaths appears driven by increased supplies of the dangerous opioid fentanyl into the illicit drug market, along with more people using drugs alone while isolating during the pandemic, leaving them unable to get help when overdosing.
