Opioid deaths surge among single and divorced Americans
A new report from Utah Senator Mike Lee’s Social Capital Project takes a deep dive into the available data on Opioid addiction and offers a bleak, but sadly, unsurprising look at the present disaster.
Opioid-related deaths quadrupled in the years between 1999 and 2015, the report says. In the single year 2015 and 2016, the number of deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids more than doubled.
Indeed, Opioids are now the top cause of accidental death for all Americans under age 50 and “have surpassed the all-time peaks of annual deaths caused (individually) by car crashes, H.I.V, and guns.”
Although never approved for medical use in the U.S., overseas chemists are manufacturing the product and selling it to addicts as a substitute for prescription painkillers.
It is typically sold as a pink-colored powder and is reported to be seven and one-half times more potent than morphine. It is also manufactured and distributed as a blue pill to mimic a pharmaceutical oxycodone pill.
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