A 30 percent rise in fatalities was driven by opioids — primarily often illegally made synthetic fentanyl.

By Don RaufOriginal Source: everydayhealth.comDeaths due to drug overdose in the United States surged to a record-breaking level during the pandemic last year, according to a report released July 14 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.The rise from 72,000 fatalities in 2019 to 93,000 in 2020 represented a change of nearly 30 percent. Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), called the 12-month increase the largest recorded since 1999.Michael Barnett, MD, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, said that the numbers were...click here to continue reading