America’s opioid epidemic is affecting the next generation

America’s opioid epidemic is not Going Away

It is affecting men, women, children and even new born babies and the health of the next generation of Americans. Its demographic is non-Hispanic white Americans, Native Americans and the working class, and it is shortening life expectancy for the first time in a century.

Opioid overdoses claimed more than 64,000 lives in America in 2017, more than guns or car accidents.

This rise is fuelled in large part by the drug fentanyl, a synthetic opioid painkiller that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin.

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