A different kind of epidemic is sweeping across the U.S.
QUICK FACTS:
- Drug deaths in the United States set a new record taking 93,331 lives.
- The data comes from statistics released on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to The New York Times (NYT).
- Deaths rose nearly 30% in 2020, rising in every state except for New Hampshire and South Dakota.
- The biggest increases were in the South and the West.
OTHER SOMBER RECORDS SET IN 2020:
- 2020 saw not only the most drug overdose deaths in a year but also the most deaths from opioid overdoses.
- It also saw the most overdose deaths from stimulants like methamphetamine.
- Moreover, it saw the most deaths from the highly deadly fentanyl, a class of synthetic opioids.
WHAT DOCTORS ARE SAYING:
- University of California, San Francisco Professor of medicine Daniel Ciccarone said of the surge in overdose deaths, “It’s huge, it’s historic, it’s unheard of, unprecedented, and a real shame.” “It’s a complete shame,” reports NYT.
BACKGROUND:
- The highest yearly deaths from car crashes, gun violence, and AIDS have already in recent years been overtaken by annual drug overdose deaths.
- NYT reports “overdose deaths dipped slightly in 2018. But they resumed their upward course in 2019, and drug deaths were rising in the early months of 2020.”
- Congress passed a package of bills in 2018 meant to reduce the drug overdose death toll by putting new limits on prescription drugs and improving addiction treatment access.
- Congress also earmarked $1.5 billion to fight the epidemic earlier this year.
WHERE THE DRUGS ARE COMING FROM:
- “It appears that the pandemic may have briefly interrupted the flow of fentanyls from China into the United States,” writes NYT.
- Chinese money launderers have teamed up with Mexican cartels to profit billions from the U.S. fentanyl crisis.
- The fentanyl boom facilitated by China is different from past opioid epidemics in that it “involves an international operation of people in multiple countries working together to produce and transport the drugs and then secretly shuttle the profits across U.S. borders,” according to The Washington Examiner.
- “It’s the greatest drug scourge in American history—more Americans killed annually than any time in history, and so, yeah, this is a problem of epic proportions,” said Fentanyl, Inc. author Ben Westhoff.
- One recent Fox News piece points out that China’s doctrine of “Unrestricted Warfare,” a book published by two Chinese colonels almost 20 years ago, lays out the strategy for “fighting [America] on every front, from cybersecurity to outer space to inner cities where Americans are overdosing on drugs like Fentanyl.”
