America’s drug overdose epidemic worsens

The cases of overdose and deaths due to the consumption of synthetic opioids increased by 202 in USA and Canadaaccording to the alert UN in a report published this Thursday in Vienna.

“The North American drug overdose epidemic worsened in 2022 due to increased production and trafficking of synthetic opioids, especially illicit fentanyl.”, points out the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in its analysis of the production, trafficking and consumption of drugs last year.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more powerful than morphine.

The INCB, an agency of the United Nations system, highlights that the overdose crisis has “exacerbated” and has generated an increase in deaths.

“Recorded overdose deaths in Canada and the United States increased despite the adoption of strengthened measures to mitigate the negative consequences of drug use, such as the increased availability and accessibility of naloxone and the use of test strips to detect fentanyl”points out.

Thus, provisional data indicates that in the US more than 107,000 people died from overdoses during 2021, an increase of 15% compared to the figures for 2020.

Even greater was the increase in the number of deaths caused specifically by synthetic opioids and which account for 60% of all deaths from this cause, according to the INCB, which points out that there is no data on how many non-fatal overdoses occur.

In Canada, overdose deaths skyrocketed 96% between 2020 and 2021.

The health authorities of this country have explained that the supply of increasingly toxic drugs has contributed to the worsening of the overdose crisis.

North America remains the region of the world with the highest use of opioids for pain treatment, with rates of use of these drugs more than double those of Western and Central Europe.

Source: EFE