By: Nadja Popovich
America is in the midst of an unprecedented drug overdose epidemic. Nationally, overdose deaths have more than doubled over the past decade and a half, driven largely by opioids – initially prescription painkillers, but increasingly heroin.
Today, more Americans die from drug overdoses than car crashes or gun fatalities. In all, drug overdoses killed 47,000 people in the US in 2014, the latest year for which data is available. That’s 130 deaths per day, on average. The majority of those deaths – 29,000, or 80 per day – involved an opioid.
