The State of Our Ongoing Polydrug Use Epidemic

We're in the fourth wave of the opioid overdose epidemic.

 Polysubstance drug use a ‘fourth wave’ of opioid epidemic

Opioids increasingly propelled by fentanyl and meth. The United States is knee-deep in what some experts call the opioid epidemic’s “fourth wave,” which is not only placing drug users at greater risk but also is complicating efforts to address the nation’s drug problem.

The Multibillion-Dollar Epidemic: 5 Takeaways From PBS' 'Chasing Heroin'

This documentary offers an immense amount of information as it follows the lives of three individuals. Here are five key takeaways as efforts continue to end the opioid epidemic.

Drug companies bought doctors fancy meals — and then those doctors prescribed more opioids

A new study reveals a correlation between drug companies’ payments to doctors and opioid prescriptions.

First Try to Understand the Opioid Epidemic

There is a danger in doing something to solve a problem without fully understanding the possible consequences of such actions.

Heroin Epidemic's New Terror: Carfentanil

Carfentanil is the most potent commercial opioid in the world, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. It is 10,000 times stronger than morphine, and at least 100 times more powerful than its analog, the opioid fentanyl, which was linked to Prince's untimely death.

How Bad is the Opioid Epidemic?

The opioid epidemic has been called the worst drug crisis in American history. Death rates now rival those of AIDS during the 1990s, and with overdoses from heroin and other opioids now killing more than 27,000 people a year, the crisis has led to urgent calls for action. The epidemic didn’t happen overnight.

How Drug Warriors Helped to Fuel the Opioid Epidemic

Even today, many feel better about Americans taking “medical heroin” than medical marijuana.

Is Big Pharma Addicted To Opioid Painkillers?

Uncomfortably aware of the struggle patients face, the pharmaceutical industry is at a crossroads while political and regulatory pressures mount on how — and whether — to limit the addictive traits of the painkillers they market or curb sales.

The New Drugging of America

The CDC reports that the relatively recent epidemic of opium-addiction is now America's fastest growing drug problem. The source of most of these opiates is not the foreign cartels, traffickers and drug dealers depicted in Hollywood movies; it is pharmacies fulfilling prescriptions written by often well-meaning doctors for Vicodin, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, and other opoid pain relievers.

The Other Opioid Crisis — People in Poor Countries Can’t Get the Pain Medication They Need

There are two opioid crises in the world today. One is the epidemic of abuse and misuse, present in many countries but rising at an alarming rate in the United States. The other crisis is older and affects many more people around the world each year: too few opioids.

The $1 Tool That Might Curb the Overdose Epidemic

A new study shows that fentanyl test strips nudge drug users to take extra precautions.

The Opioid Diaries

The Opioid Diaries is a visual record of a national emergency—and it demands our urgent attention.

The opioid epidemic in 6 charts

Over the last two decades, as prescriptions for opioids began to soar, rates of addiction and overdose deaths increased in parallel.

What Those in Power Are Missing About the Opioid Epidemic

“This is what happens when public health fails.”

America’s opioid crisis has become an “epidemic of epidemics”

Rising intravenous drug use has created new public health epidemics of hepatitis C and deadly bacterial infections.

Do No Harm

"Do No Harm: The Opioid Epidemic exposes the opioid lie we have been living in America for decades. This film and companion book can play a key role in educating communities about why opioid manufacturers should be held accountable for their calculated deception of health professionals and the general public. It's time for accountability. It's time for restitution. It's time to help our communities heal and recover."

Drug overdose deaths were so bad in 2017, they reduced overall life expectancy

The CDC blamed the increase in drug overdose deaths, as well as a continuing increase in suicides, for a drop in life expectancy in 2017, making that year the third in a row in which life expectancy fell or remained flat.

America's Other Epidemic

A new approach to fighting the opioid crisis as it quietly rages on.

America’s huge problem with opioid prescribing, in one quote

The epidemic began when doctors prescribed a huge number of opioids — leading the drugs to proliferate not just among patients but also among teens who rummaged through their parents’ medicine cabinets, friends and family whom patients shared the drugs with, and a black market where patients sold excess pills. Over time, drug users moved to other opioids, including heroin, fentanyl, and fentanyl analogs. And overdose deaths climbed and climbed.

Covid-19 is undoing a decade of progress on the opioid epidemic

As the opioid epidemic was forced to cede priority to the more immediate crisis of Covid-19, many of the resources devoted to treatment and research of opioid abuse were curtailed or put on pause.

Documentary films explore the despair of America's heroin and opioid epidemic

If you looked across the epidemic, you would see junkies, smugglers, cops, ruined veins and broken mothers, all connected in a vicious puzzle stretching from the poppy fields of Mexico to the cracked streets of Georgia and, finally, into scattered graveyards, where prayers and hymns echo over coffins of the fallen. America’s heroin and opioid scourge is intimate and distant, resounding and silent. It is a haunted landscape of slack-faces, failed recoveries and holding cells.

How America’s prisons are fueling the opioid epidemic

Prisons aren’t linking people to adequate addiction treatment — and many are dying as a result.

How to stop the deadliest drug overdose crisis in American history

The opioid epidemic could kill hundreds of thousands in the next decade. But America can beat it.

Life Expectancy Is Down, Again, Thanks to Opioids

We’re not really doing much of anything to solve this problem.

New strategy urgently needed to tackle devastating opioids crisis, US told

Bipartisan commission makes 76 recommendations to confront crisis that has caused 1m overdose deaths since 1999.

Opioid Misuse: America’s Not So Silent Killer

The death of Prince underscores the opioid abuse epidemic in America that is created by the over-prescribing of opioids to treat pain known by names like Percocet, OxyContin, Fentanyl and Vicodin.

Pharmacists could be front-line fighters in battle against opioid epidemic

Naloxone alone will not mitigate the opioid crisis. Yet the ability to reverse a fatal overdose – having someone nearby who carries and can administer naloxone – allows the survivor another chance to enter treatment that addresses the social, structural, genetic, behavioral and individual factors of opioid use disorder. Pharmacists have an important role in helping to remove the stigma associated with requesting and carrying naloxone by openly discussing its benefits and making naloxone available to all patients.

STAT forecast: Opioids could kill nearly 500,000 Americans in the next decade

Opioids could kill nearly half a million people across America over the next decade as the crisis of addiction and overdose accelerates. Deaths from opioids have been rising sharply for years, and drug overdoses already kill more Americans under age 50 than anything else. STAT asked leading public health experts at 10 universities to forecast the arc of the epidemic over the next decade. The consensus: It will get worse before it gets better.

The magnitude of America’s opioid epidemic, in six charts

Drug overdose deaths, once rare, are now the leading cause of accidental death in the US, surpassing peak annual deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents, guns, and HIV infection. As a former public health official, clinician, and researcher, I’ve been engaged in efforts to control the opioid addiction epidemic for the past 15 years. The data shows that the situation is dire and getting worse. Until opioids are prescribed more cautiously and until effective opioid addiction treatment becomes easier to access, overdose deaths will likely remain at record high levels.

The opioid crisis is driving up deaths of millennials in the US

The US is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It’s the world’s center of innovation and medical science, yet the country can’t keep their youth from dying. US millennials are now dying at such high rates that it’s driven life expectancy in the country to decline for two years in a row, the first time that’s happened since the early 1960s. The primary cause for the trend is the opioid crisis.

The opioid epidemic isn’t unsolvable

There are real, evidence-based solutions to the drug overdose crisis.

The opioid epidemic may be even deadlier than we think

The current drug crisis already kills more people than guns or cars. But a new study suggests it’s even worse than the current numbers say.

The opioid epidemic, explained

If nothing is done, we can expect a lot of people to die: A forecast by STAT concluded that as many as 650,000 people will die over the next 10 years from opioid overdoses — more than the entire city of Baltimore. The US risks losing the equivalent of a whole American city in just one decade.

The True Cause of the Opioid Epidemic

New research supports the idea that economic distress led to an increase in opioid abuse. But some say the origins of the epidemic are far more complicated.

The US opioid epidemic isn’t about despair—it’s about supply

The reason, says Ruhm, is the “drug environment.” The overprescribing of opioids and the increased availability of cheap heroin from Mexico is a much better explanation for the US’s jump in mortality than socioeconomic decline.

What Those in Power Are Missing About the Opioid Epidemic

People who use drugs and those who love them have helped reverse thousands of overdoses in the United States, saving friends, family members, and strangers. They’ve done this work without recognition, without fanfare, and sometimes at great risk to themselves.

Why Data About the Opioid Epidemic Is So Unreliable

Technology and data have helped solve and address many social problems in recent years. But local governments still aren’t doing enough data sharing about health-related issues. Down the road, we will face another epidemic that seems unlikely, even impossible right now. Laying down a practice of using data in a transparent and up-to-date fashion will arm agencies to respond and collaborate better in the future.