120 deaths a day: US heroin & prescription drugs epidemic spinning out of control
RT.com
29 Jul, 2015
American lawmakers are grappling with ways to respond to a worsening heroin epidemic. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death in the US, surpassing car accidents and gunshot wounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lawmakers attending a House of Representatives judicial committee hearing on Tuesday learned that the number of people overdosing on opioids has quadrupled in the past decade, with many deaths occurring in the upper class, particularly among women and in suburban areas.
“There were over 43,000 deaths in 2013, or approximately 120 per day, over half of which involved either a prescription painkiller or heroin. These are our family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues,” Jack Riley, acting deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency, told the committee.
Drug deaths now outnumber deaths from gunshot wounds (over 33,600) and motor vehicle crashes (over 32,700) in the United States, according to the CDC.
Riley said there are more than 600,000 heroin users in the US today, and agency officials say the figure is likely to be undercounted, as it is based on a household survey and wouldn’t account for all heroin users among homeless populations.
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