US Drug Overdose Rates Have Increased 70 Times Over The Past Decades

A recent study has revealed that in the past couple of decades, the numbers of drug overdose deaths soared as high as 70 times in many U.S. counties. The recorded cases has involved adults that are in the ages of 20 to 24. The alarming figures began to hike in 2014, which could mean that a rising trend in drug overdose deaths is currently happening under our noses. 

According to 2014 data -- relayed by the Population Reference Bureau coming from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- drug overdose has outranked homicide as the leading cause of deaths in the U.S. The certain age range of people dying because of drug overdose has been alarming since it heightened in 2014.

The . It was published in the journal Preventive Medicine. 

Low Drug Trafficking Cases Have Higher Drug Overdose Deaths

As posted by Huffington Post, the government have found that counties with high numbers of drug overdose deaths are not the places with high drug trafficking cases. This somehow shows that drugs passed through the high drug-trafficking places does not really affect the number of deaths related to drug overdose.

The research posted on the UPMC website has revealed that there is a new kind of drug overdose case that needs the careful attention of authorities. The co-author of this study, Jeanine Buchanich, who is the deputy director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Occupational Biostatistics and Epidemiology said that it doesn't really correspond with high drug trafficking cases in many places making it unusual.

The numbers recorded in the study -- conducted by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health -- have shown that since 1979 until 2014, overdose cases increased with an average of 6.7 percent every year within the time span. Making the initial number of 2,475 deaths of drug overdose deaths grow up to 38,675, spanning from 1979 to 2014.

Counties Mainly Affected

The study includes many areas in different states such as eastern and western Pennsylvania and New Jersey, southern Michigan, eastern Ohio, southeastern New York, and the coastal areas of England. The areas that showed 70 folds of drug overdose cases are particularly in Norfolk in Louisiana, Franklin Massachusetts, Places in Montgomery, Summit and Kanawha in Ohio, counties in Jefferson, and West Virginia.

"While resources are justifiably being targeted to the high-intensity drug-trafficking areas, they must also be allocated to counties outside those areas with rapidly increasing and currently high drug overdose rates," Buchanich stated.