American Life-Expectancy Falls For Second Straight Year As Drug Overdoses Soar

The twin scourges of opioid addiction and worsening wealth inequality are literally draining the lifeblood from the American public. Case in point: The Centers for Disease Control confirmed earlier today that the average life expectancy at birth declined in 2016 for the second consecutive year - the first multiyear decline since 1963, when a flu epidemic led to a rash of deaths as hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans succumbed to the virus.

The increase has been fueled by a 21% rise in drug overdose deaths, according to the Washington Post.

Let that sink in for a second: In 1963, penicillin was a relatively recent innovation. We live in an age of unprecedented medicinal efficacy. Despite this, Americans are sicker than ever before.

And as if that weren’t enough, they’re also spending more on health-care than ever before. Data from the NHE shows the US spent a staggering $3.3 trillion on healthcare in 2016, equivalent to roughly 18% of GDP.

“I think we should take it very seriously,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told the Washington Post. “If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they’re not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up."

As we’ve highlighted time and time again, more than 42,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses alone in 2016 - a 28% increase over 2015. When deaths from drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine and benzodiazepines are included, the overall increase was 21%.

A multiyear decline in life expectancy is more commonly associated with AIDS epidemics in southern and eastern Africa or wars in Syria and Afghanistan, said Majid Ezzati, a professor of public health at Imperial College London who has studied life expectancy.

“The story does come down to young people,” he said. “It’s the overdose story, to a large extent."

Last year - when the CDC data showed the first annualized drop in life expectancy since the early 1990s - public health observers declared that this could be the beginning of a seriously troubling trend that could have far reaching repercussions for the US economy. Experts, including Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, examined the impact of so-called “diseases of despair” - drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism - as well as small increases in deaths from heart disease, strokes and diabetes as the Baby Boom generation ages into retirement.

Furthermore, the 2016 data shows that just three major causes of death are responsible: unintentional injuries, Alzheimer’s disease and suicides, with the bulk of the difference attributable to the 63,632 people who died of overdoses. That total was an increase of more than 11,000 over the 52,404 who died of the same cause in 2015. This trend was largely driven by deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which more than doubled from the previous year. Heroin and prescription opioid overdose deaths also rose, but more modestly.

At the same time, a long decline in deaths from heart disease continued a six-year trend of leveling out, Anderson said. The small decrease last year in the rate of the nation’s leading cause of death no longer canceled the drug epidemic’s impact on life expectancy, Anderson said.

“The key factor is the increase in drug overdose deaths,” he said.

Overall, life expectancy dropped by a tenth of a year, from 78.7 to 78.6. It fell two-tenths of a year for men, who have much higher overdose death rates, from 76.3 to 76.1 years. Women’s life expectancy held steady at 81.1 years.

While drug mortality has been increasing among all age groups since 1999, it’s highest among those ages 25 to 54. Their fatal overdose rate for all drugs was roughly 35 cases per 100,000 individuals in 2016, compared with 12 deaths per 100,000 for people under 24 and six deaths per 100,000 among seniors 65 and older.

Examining this data through the lens of gender reveals another startling detail: The bulk of this increase is driven by a spike in overdose deaths among men.

As WaPo points out, men of all ages (26 deaths per 100,000) are twice as likely to die of a drug overdose as women (13 per 100,000). At the state level, West Virginia stands alone as the epicenter of overdose mortality, with 52 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2016. The next two states, New Hampshire and Ohio, each saw 39 deaths per 100,000 last year.

“This is no longer an opioid crisis,” said Patrick Kennedy, a former Rhode Island congressman who was a member of President Trump’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. “This is a moral crisis . . . we know how to answer this problem, but we can’t get around our own prejudices."

During the campaign, President Trump promised to do everything in his power to combat the opioid epidemic. But so far, his actions have fallen far short of the recommendations from a committee that he created in March to study options to suppress the crisis. Most notably, Trump ignored a recommendation from the committee to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency - a designation that would’ve allowed the hardest-hit states to access federal disaster-relief funds. Instead Trump declared it a national health crisis, leaving states empty-handed.

Another factor that shows just how damaging opioids have been to the American public: last year, rates of heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, strokes, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease fell, as did the nation’s overall death rate. But this wasn’t enough to offset the impact of opioids.

Increasing incidences of Alzheimer’s disease have also contributed to this trend.

“As people avoid [cancer and heart disease], they’re going to survive long enough to die of Alzheimer’s,” he said.

And while only limited provisional data is available for 2017, things don’t look any better.

“My guess is that when all of the data are in that the [2017] trend line will be at least as steep as for 2016, if not steeper,” Anderson said.

And in case you wondered what all this has to do with me... apart from it"s "your" life expectancy, well this is what happened to the only thing that really matters to everyone... The Dow... the last time that US life expectancy dropped for two straight years...

Meth Crisis In West Virginia - Overdose Deaths Soar To Record High

According to a new study from the Health Statistic Center of West Virginia, overdose deaths related to methamphetamine have increased by 500 percent in just four short years.

In fact, a record-number 129 people have passed from overdoses in 2017 - and that number is expected to climb through the holiday season.

As the late American-German poet, Charles Bukowski once said, “My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you.”  It seems as some West Virginians have taken it to heart...

Chad Napier, prevention officer with the Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area said, about half the meth overdoses involve fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that remains the leading cause of drug overdoses in the state. Napier further said, addicts are using meth mixed with fentanyl, sometimes unknowingly, which is the reason for the overdose surge.

In November, we highlighted how 60.1% of heroin tested by authorities in Canada for the 2017 period contained fentanyl. We also noted, cocaine and methamphetamine saw a noticeable surge as well. The situation in Canada is critical with one funeral home in Vancouver warning of “too many bodies.”

As we’ve pointed out in the article, fentanyl is being shipped from China into Canada, then distributed across North America. In West Virginia’s case, meth dealers have graduated from their Breaking Bad recreational vehicles— to now demanding super meth from extravagant laboratories in Mexico.

So far, Kanawha and Cabell counties in West Virginia have been hit the hardest in meth-related overdoses. About thirty Kanawha residents and twenty eight in Cabell have died with the epidemic spreading to other counties such as Raleigh and Wood.

“A lot of these people don’t know what they’re getting,” Napier said.

 

“We’re seeing the meth cut with fentanyl, so that’s increasing the meth [overdose] numbers, I believe.”

The Health Statistic Center of West Virginia said, meth-related overdoses across the state have dramatically increased over the past four years from 21 in 2014, 49 in 2015, 107 in 2016 to 129 deaths so far in 2017.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, state health commissioner warned, residents are mixing meth and opioids producing a dangerous concoction that could kill anyone who comes in contact with it. The journey of the Mexican-made meth started in the southern states and has now spread to the east.

“We’re seeing a lot more meth, and it’s a different kind of meth than we were seeing five or six years ago,” Gupta said.

 

“There’s a push from the cartels to get these drugs out there.”

So it seems,  Mexican drug cartels have seen one too many episodes of Breaking Bad, as they attempt to empire build across the United States killing what’s left of America’s middle class through a powerful concoction of meth and synthetic opioids.

Kellyanne Conway Will Be White House Opioid Czar

President Trump is finally acquiescing to his opioid commission’s recommendation that he swiftly appoint an “opioid czar” to coordinate the federal government’s response to the rapidly worsening opioid epidemic.

And his pick is: Former campaign manager and West Wing strategist Kellyanne Conway, according to Buzzfeed. The pick is significant: Thanks to her frequent television appearances both now and during the campaign, Conway is one of the administration’s most visible figures. Tom Marino, Trump"s previous nominee for the position, withdrew after it was revealed he pushed for a bill that made it harder for law enforcement to crack down on opioid drug manufacturers.

As many are already aware, drug-overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years, driven primarily by opioids, particularly powerful synthetic opioid drugs that have tainted the US heroin supply and have led to an unprecedented number of accidental overdoses. Last year alone, it’s estimated that 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Conway would be coordinating the opioid response effort from the White House. Of course, the position of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, another agency that would presumably be heavily involved in the administration"s response, remains vacant since Marino withdrew his name from consideration.

The opioid crisis played heavily in Trump’s campaign rhetoric and after taking office he appointed a commission led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to compile a report on effective strategies for combating the crisis. The committee issued more than 50 recommendations, most of which have yet to be implemented, and many likely never will be. Last month, Trump declared the opioid abuse epidemic a national public health crisis, but declined to declare it a national emergency, which would’ve allowed states to receive federal disaster relief funding.

"It is a positive sign, she is a high profile figure in the administration, showing the administration takes this seriously," opioid policy expert Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University told BuzzFeed News.

 

But Kolodny noted the administration still hasn"t named a head for its Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), or released a strategy to combat the crisis (one is promised in February), or requested any money from Congress to fill the depleted national public health emergency fund — now down to $66,000 — to pay for its health emergency declaration.

Trump has asked her "to coordinate and lead the effort from the White House," Sessions said at a news conference in remarks that went beyond prepared ones from the event. Sessions also announced $12 million in grants to state and local police departments, and the opening of a new Drug Enforcement Agency field office in Louisville to combat illicit opioid use in Appalachia. He also ordered each US attorney"s office to name an opioid coordinator.

"I know that this crisis is daunting — the death rates are stunning — and it can be discouraging," Sessions said. "But we will turn the tide."

When Christie’s commission was working, Conway sat in on many of the panel"s meetings and has been heavily involved with crafting the administration"s response to the crisis. Sessions touted Conway"s communication skills at the news conference, perhaps signaling an administration push for public service announcements aimed at changing public attitudes towards opioid addiction.

"Stemming overdose deaths will take a broad interagency approach led by someone with a singular focus and extensive knowledge of the drivers of - and solutions to  the epidemic," former ONDCP official Regina LaBelle told BuzzFeed. "Therefore, a Senate confirmed Director of National Drug Control Policy should lead this effort."

Calls for Trump to appoint an opioid czar have intensified in recent days. Earlier this week, Axios published a list of reasons why Trump should appoint someone to coordinate the federal government"s response to the epidemic. Axios made the case for appointing a White House drug policy coordinator, the path Trump eventually chose.

"There"s only so much money and human capacity to go around. A centralized authority figure could help make sure agencies aren"t duplicating each other"s work, and set priorities those agencies might not arrive at on their own, but which would contribute more to the broader, inter-agency effort."

However, apparently not everybody agrees on the need to appoint an opioid czar. At a congressional hearing in Baltimore on Tuesday, Christie, who headed a presidential report panel on the opioid crisis, had called the clamor for a US opioids czar "overblown." The steps needed to counter the overdose crisis are well understood, he said, starting with limiting over-prescriptions of painkillers, cutting fentanyl exports from China, and providing the overdose remedy naloxone to communities, and don"t need a czar to kick start.

"Enough To Kill 5 Million People": Authorities Make One Of Biggest Fentanyl Busts In History

The Acting United States Attorney for the District of Nebraska announced earlier this morning that a joint force involving both the Drug Enforcement Administration and Nebraska State Patrol made one of the largest fentanyl busts in the history of the country.  According to authorities, 27 year old Edgar Navarro-Aguirre of California was arrested at an Amtrak station in Omaha carrying 15 kilos (33 pounds) of the deadly opioid.  Here is more from a local NBC affiliate:

Navarro-Aguirre was traveling on the Amtrak train and waiting at the station when a Drug Enforcement Administration agent was doing a routine surveillance there and noticed a suspicious person with a bag.

"We have officers that are trained to pick out people that are different than the normal traveling public," Nebraska State Patrol Lt. Jason Scott said.

According to an affidavit, Navarro-Aguirre said it was his friend"s bag, and he denied that anything illegal was inside.

Inside Navarro-Aguirre"s luggage was 15 vacuum-sealed bundles of what forensic chemists determined was pure or nearly pure fentanyl.

"This fentanyl seizure is the largest ever in Nebraska and one of the largest in the nation," a news released from the U.S. Attorney"s Office said.

For those who may not be familiar with this deadly epidemic, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 40-50 times more potent than herion and has resulted in a wave of overdoses across the country, and particularly in the midwest.  Experts say it only takes a small amount, about 3 milligrams, for the drug to be fatal.

"This is playing Russian Roulette knowing every cylinder has a bullet in it," DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge Matt Barden said.

With that in mind, the amount seized by authorities in its pure form would be enough to kill approximately 4.9 million people, or nearly the entire populations of Iowa and Nebraska.

"I think it was literally one mishap away from something extremely tragic for Nebraska," Lt. Scott said, "dropping a suitcase or it being cut open, this is in a public venue, this was not in a private room."

As the New York Times pointed out last month, fentanyl is estimated to have killed over 20,000 people in the U.S. in 2016, a 5x increase over just a couple of years.

Drug overdoses killed roughly 64,000 people in the United States last year, according to the first governmental account of nationwide drug deaths to cover all of 2016. It’s a staggering rise of more than 22 percent over the 52,404 drug deaths recorded the previous year — and even higher than The New York Times’s estimate in June, which was based on earlier preliminary data.

Drug overdoses are expected to remain the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, as synthetic opioids — primarily fentanyl and its analogues — continue to push the death count higher. Drug deaths involving fentanyl more than doubled from 2015 to 2016, accompanied by an upturn in deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine. Together they add up to an epidemic of drug overdoses that is killing people at a faster rate than the H.I.V. epidemic at its peak.

The explosion in fentanyl deaths and the persistence of widespread opioid addiction have swamped local and state resources. Communities say their budgets are being strained by the additional needs — for increased police and medical care, for widespread naloxone distribution and for a stronger foster care system that can handle the swelling number of neglected or orphaned children.

Navarro-Aguirre is facing a charge of possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing fentanyl. The penalty carries a minimum of 10 years with a maximum of life in prison.  The 27-year-old will appear in federal court Friday afternoon.

Small-Town American Budgets Devastated By Opioid Crisis As 41 States Subpoena Big Pharma

A surge in Opioid consumption, primarily prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl - a drug 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine - and the resulting spike in overdose related deaths is devastating families in rural America.  But the opioid epidemic is laying waste to more than just the broken families it counts among its victims, as Reuters points out today, rural municipalities are finding it nearly impossible to fund the surging costs associated with overdoses which come in the form of emergency call volumes, medical examiner and coroner bills, and overcrowded jails and courtrooms.  

As an example, Ross County, Ohio, a town of only 77,000, says its budget for child services has doubled in just 5 years and 75% of the children place into protection come from homes where parents have opioid addictions.

Ross County, a largely rural region of 77,000 people an hour south of Columbus, Ohio, is wrestling with an explosion in opioid-related deaths - 44 last year compared to 19 in 2009. The drug addiction epidemic is shattering not just lives but also stressing the county budget.

About 75 percent of the 200 children placed into state care in the county have parents with opioid addictions, up from about 40 percent five years ago, local officials say. Their care is more expensive because they need specialist counseling, longer stays and therapy.

That has caused a near doubling in the county’s child services budget to almost $2.4 million from $1.3 million, said Doug Corcoran, a county commissioner.

For a county with a general fund of just $23 million, that is a big financial burden, Corcoran said. He and his colleagues are now exploring what they might cut to pay for the growing costs of the epidemic, such as youth programs and economic development schemes.

But it"s not just the cost of child services that is wreaking havoc on municipal budgets as everything from autopsy and toxicology costs to court fees and jail expenses are surging throughout rural America.

Autopsy and toxicology costs there have nearly doubled in six years, from about $89,000 in 2010 to $165,000 in 2016, county data shows.

Court costs are soaring, mainly because of the expense of prosecuting opioid-related crimes and providing accused with a public defender, local officials say.

The county is using contingency funds to pay for the added coroner costs, said Mike Baker, the county’s top government official. Last year, the county drew $63,000 from those funds, up from $19,000 in 2014, he said. In 2014, the county saw 10 drug-related deaths. In 2016, the number had grown to 53.

In Mercer County, West Virginia, 300 miles (483 km) to the south of Indiana County, opioid-related jail costs are carving into the small annual budget of $12 million for the community of 62,000 people.

The county’s jail expenses are on course to increase by $100,000 this year, compared to 2015. The county pays $48.50 per inmate per day to the jail, and this year the jail is on course to have over 2,000 more “inmate days” compared to 2015, according to county data.

“At least 90 percent of those extra jail costs are opioid-related,” said Greg Puckett, a county commissioner who sits on a national county opioid task force. “We spend more in one month on our jail bill than we spend per month on economic development, our health department and our emergency services combined.”

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg has just noted, attorneys general from 41 states are broadening their investigation into the opioid industry and have served subpoenas to five pharma companies that make the most powerful prescription painkillers.

They announced Tuesday that they had served subpoenas requesting information from five companies that make powerful prescription painkillers and three distributors. Forty-one attorneys general are involved.

The investigation into marketing and sales practices seeks to find out whether the industry"s own actions worsened the epidemic.

If the industry cooperates, the investigation could lead to a national settlement.

The Healthcare Distribution Alliance said in a statement that it"s not responsible for the volume of opioid prescribing but that it does want to work on solving the public health crisis.

Dozens of local and state governments have already filed, announced or publicly considered lawsuits against drugmakers or distributors.

To add some context to the scale of the opioid epidemic, the California Department of Public Health recently dropped some staggering statistics showing that there are a remarkable number of counties in California where annual prescriptions for pain killers actually exceed the population.  

Trinity County is the state’s fourth-smallest, and ended last year with an estimated population of 13,628 people.

Its residents also filled prescriptions for oxycodone, hydrocodone and other opioids 18,439 times, the highest per capita rate in California.

Besides Trinity, other counties with more prescriptions than people include Lake, Shasta, Tuolumne and Del Norte counties. In the Sacramento region, El Dorado, Placer and Sacramento counties had prescription rates above the statewide average, with Yolo County slightly below the state average.

A county’s prescription total represents all opioids dispensed via prescriptions filled at a pharmacy and tracked by the state. Statewide, 15 percent of Californians were prescribed opioids in 2016, ranging from 7.3 percent of residents in tiny Alpine County to almost 27 percent in Lake County.

As might be expected, the scripts per capita are highest in California"s more rural northern counties.

So who is participating most in this deadly epidemic?  Well, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the biggest abusers of opioids are high-school educated, unemployed, white people living in small towns...

“The following characteristics were associated with higher amounts of opioids prescribed: a larger percentage of non-Hispanic whites; higher rates of uninsured and Medicaid enrollment; lower educational attainment; higher rates of unemployment; (small-town) status; more dentists and physicians per capita; a higher prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, arthritis, and disability; and higher suicide rates,” concluded the authors of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released in July.

“What you’re seeing in California is what you’re seeing in many parts of the country, including Oregon,” Korthuis said. “There are still a lot of rural counties around the U.S. that are awash in prescription opioids.”

Of course, growth in opioid addiction is hardly just a California phenomenon.  According to the CDC"s Annual Surveillance Report of Drug-Related Risks and Outcomes, addiction-related deaths are far more prevalent in the rural "rust-belt" states of the Midwest.

Meanwhile, the epidemic is growing far more severe every year with overdose deaths up 167% across the country since 1999.

The rate of drug overdose deaths increased from 6.1 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 16.3 in 2015; for unintenttional drug overdose deaths, the rate increased from 4.0 per 100,000 in 1999 to 13.8 in 2015; for drug overdose deaths involving any opioid, the rate increased from 2.9 per 100,000 in 1999 to 10.4 in 2015 (p<0.05); for unintenttional drug overdose deaths involving any opioid, the rate increased from 2.1 per 100,000 in 1999 to 9.3 per 100,000 in 2015 (p<0.05). For all four categories of drug overdose deaths, increases in rates were largest from 2013 to 2015, with the rate increasing on average by 9% per year for overall drug overdose deaths (p<0.05), 11% per year for unintenttional drug overdose deaths (p<0.05), 15% per year for drug overdose deaths involving any opioid (p<0.05), and 16% for unintenttional drug overdose deaths involving any opioid (p<0.05).

But don"t worry too much because, as Princeton Economist Alan Krueger told us recently, there is a simple solution to the opioid epidemic in the U.S...apparently it can all be solved with just a little more Obamacare.

Here Are The California Counties Where Annual Opioid Scripts Outnumber People

The California Department of Public Health just dropped some staggering statistics about the level of opioid abuse in America"s progressive paradise of the left coast.  As the Sacramento Bee points out, there are a remarkable number of counties in California where annual prescriptions for pain killers actually exceed the population.  

Trinity County is the state’s fourth-smallest, and ended last year with an estimated population of 13,628 people.

Its residents also filled prescriptions for oxycodone, hydrocodone and other opioids 18,439 times, the highest per capita rate in California.

Besides Trinity, other counties with more prescriptions than people include Lake, Shasta, Tuolumne and Del Norte counties. In the Sacramento region, El Dorado, Placer and Sacramento counties had prescription rates above the statewide average, with Yolo County slightly below the state average.

A county’s prescription total represents all opioids dispensed via prescriptions filled at a pharmacy and tracked by the state. Statewide, 15 percent of Californians were prescribed opioids in 2016, ranging from 7.3 percent of residents in tiny Alpine County to almost 27 percent in Lake County.

As might be expected, the scripts per capita are highest in California"s more rural northern counties.

So who is participating most in this deadly epidemic?  Well, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the biggest abusers of opioids are high-school educated, unemployed, white people living in small towns...

“The following characteristics were associated with higher amounts of opioids prescribed: a larger percentage of non-Hispanic whites; higher rates of uninsured and Medicaid enrollment; lower educational attainment; higher rates of unemployment; (small-town) status; more dentists and physicians per capita; a higher prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, arthritis, and disability; and higher suicide rates,” concluded the authors of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released in July.

“What you’re seeing in California is what you’re seeing in many parts of the country, including Oregon,” Korthuis said. “There are still a lot of rural counties around the U.S. that are awash in prescription opioids.”

...oh, and grandma and grandpa are getting high on the reg as well.

In California, residents aged 15 to 29 got 1.7 million prescriptions in 2016, representing 7.2 percent of the state total. That’s down from the 1.9 million prescriptions in 2015, which represented about 7.8 percent of the state total. The age range that featured the largest prescription rate increase were 70- to74-year-olds, whose prescriptions grew from almost 1,354 per 1,000 people in 2015 to 1,394 per 1,000 people in 2016.

Of course, growth in opioid addiction is hardly just a California phenomenon.  According to the CDC"s Annual Surveillance Report of Drug-Related Risks and Outcomes, addiction-related deaths are far more prevalent in the rural "rust-belt" states of the Midwest.

Meanwhile, the epidemic is growing far more severe every year with overdose deaths up 167% across the country since 1999.

The rate of drug overdose deaths increased from 6.1 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 16.3 in 2015; for unintenttional drug overdose deaths, the rate increased from 4.0 per 100,000 in 1999 to 13.8 in 2015; for drug overdose deaths involving any opioid, the rate increased from 2.9 per 100,000 in 1999 to 10.4 in 2015 (p<0.05); for unintenttional drug overdose deaths involving any opioid, the rate increased from 2.1 per 100,000 in 1999 to 9.3 per 100,000 in 2015 (p<0.05). For all four categories of drug overdose deaths, increases in rates were largest from 2013 to 2015, with the rate increasing on average by 9% per year for overall drug overdose deaths (p<0.05), 11% per year for unintenttional drug overdose deaths (p<0.05), 15% per year for drug overdose deaths involving any opioid (p<0.05), and 16% for unintenttional drug overdose deaths involving any opioid (p<0.05).

But don"t worry too much because, as Princeton Economist Alan Krueger told us yesterday, there is a simple solution to the opioid epidemic in the U.S...apparently it can all be solved with just a little more Obamacare.

The Opioid Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought

America’s opioid epidemic is now killing more than 100 people every day, fueling a public-health crisis that’s straining state and local resources – even forcing at least one Pennsylvania coroner to increase his freezer capacity to make room for all of the bodies.

And according to one recently published study, the epidemic may be killing more Americans than previously believed. The study, published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, suggests that certain states may have underestimated the rate of opioid- and heroin-related deaths, skewing national death totals by more than 20%. In 2014, the most recent year covered by the study, the rate of opioid-related deaths was, in reality, 24% higher than the official count.   

Meanwhile, data from the CDC released Tuesday show that drug overdose deaths peaked in the third quarter of last year, with 19.7 for every 100,000 people, compared with 16.7 in the same period the year before.

Trump signed an executive order in March creating a national opioid commission to recommend strategies for combating the crisis. The commission, which is being led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, has already urged Trump to declare a national emergency to deal with the opioid crisis. A final list of recommendations is expected by Oct. 1.

"We will fight this deadly epidemic and the United States will win," Trump said during a press briefing on Tuesday called to address the opioid epidemic. "We will win. We have no alternative."

Discrepancies arise when death certificates don’t specify the class of drug, or the specific drug, responsible for a given death. In certain states, the corrected opioid-related death rates were significantly higher than what had previously been reported. In Pennsylvania, which had the highest discrepancy, the real rate was more than double the official rate, with deaths per 100,000 rising to 17.8 from 8.5. Indiana, Alabama, Louisiana and Kentucky were also guilty of “substantially” underreporting death rates.

According to government data, Pennsylvania had the 32nd highest reported opioid mortality rate and the 20th highest reported heroin mortality rate in the country. But the study found that nearly half of opioid and heroin-related deaths weren’t counted. When the data were corrected, Pennsylvania’s ranking rose to the fourth-highest opioid mortality rate, and seventh-highest heroin mortality rate.

The corrected data also yielded more “coherent” geographic patterns by eliminated discrepancies caused by quirks in how fatality data are collected in each state.

“Specifically, the corrected death rates demonstrate that opioid involved mortality was concentrated in the Mountain States, Rust Belt, and Industrial North—extending to New England—and much of the South, whereas heroin deaths were particularly high in the Northeast and Rust Belt, but less so in the South or Mountain States. The results were less apparent when using reported rates, because high mortality in states such as Pennsylvania and Indiana were concealed by a frequent lack of specificity about drug involvement on death certificates.”

The study, which analyzed data on drug-related deaths collected between 2008 and 2014, found that heroin-related deaths increased more rapidly in most states, except for Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. Nationwide, the increase in heroin-involved mortality was underestimated by around 18%, while the change in opioid-related fatalities was negligible.

Drug-overdose deaths in 2015 killed 52,000 Americans, more than gun homicides or car accidents. Preliminary data suggest that number grew to nearly 60,000 in 2016. In one Ohio county, deaths from drug overdoses – the bulk of which were caused by powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl – surpassed deaths from homicides, suicides and car crashes combined.

And 2017 is expected to be even worse.

Read the full study below:

2017.08.08ajpmopiates by zerohedge on Scribd

Fed Believes Opioid Crisis Is Reason Why Men Aren&#039;t Working

Bill Polacek runs a manufacturing company in Western Pennsylvania. Even though a glut in new construction projects has dried up work for tradesmen, Polacek said he struggled to find qualified welders a few years back when he had a large number of jobs to fill. Polacek interviewed 350 people to fill openings for 50 welders and machinists at his Johnstown, Pennsylvania-based manufacturing company. But he quickly found the number of qualified candidates dwindling to the point where the number of open jobs was higher than the applicants qualified to fill them. The reason? Too many of Polacek’s interviewees either had criminal histories, or couldn’t pass a drug test.

“"We weren’t attracting the right people," Polacek says of the episode, which prompted him to invest in extensive outreach to local high schools to build up a pipeline of workers.”

America’s worsening opioid crisis has helped create a generation of men whose struggles with addiction are preventing them from finding, and holding, steady jobs. Indeed, the type of hard-to-hire Americans Polacek encountered pose a growing problem for many employers, as a deepening opioid crisis plagues American communities just as the jobless rate hovers near a 16-year low. Polacek’s situation is hardly unique; the Fed’s Beige Book, a collection of anecdotes about the business climate collected by the 12 regional Fed banks, has included many testimonials about the difficulty that some employers, particularly manufacturing firms, are having in finding qualified workers, like this one from a manufacturing firm in St. Louis.

“Manufacturing contacts in Louisville and Memphis reported difficulties finding experienced or qualified employees, with some citing candidates’ inability to pass drug tests,” the St. Louis Fed reported in the July 12 Beige Book, a survey of regional economic conditions. Businesses have also raised the issue as a barrier to finding workers in conversations with Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker.

According to Bloomberg, the Federal Reserve has stumbled on an explanation for the phenomenon that Polacek experienced when he tried to hire those welders - a question that has stumped central bankers, policy wonks and academics: Why are so many working-age men are dropping out of the labor force?

Even though this trend started 40 years ago, the Fed says the opioid crisis is now contributing to the problem of shrinking prime-age labor-force participation. The seeds of the opioid crisis were planted in the 1990s as doctors liberally prescribed dangerous painkillers like Vicodin and Oxycontin. Today, 15%, or one in seven, men between 25 and 54 are inexplicably missing from the workforce, despite the unemployment rate purportedly declining to 4.4% in June.

The opioid crisis began in earnest around the beginning of Obama’s first term in office, as deaths from drug overdoses started to climb. Now, after recording nearly 60,000 drug-related deaths last year, drugs are the biggest killer of prime-age Americans. America has more drug overdose deaths than any other developed country. Many of these deaths are caused by dangerous synthetic opioid analogues like fentanyl and carfentanil, the latter of which is 100% stronger than morphine.

And it’s not just Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, who was asked several questions about opioids during her testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last week, who’s trying to connect the dots between opioids and the surfeit of unemployable, shiftless young men: At the Cleveland Fed’s summit, talk about the crisis wasn’t reserved for the opioid-specific panel: it came up throughout the other sessions, according to Bloomberg.

“It’s an economic issue. It has economic implications, but it’s a whole lot more than that,” Petrus said. “It’s cross-cutting.”

Many other notable academics, including Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton, have published economic research about opioids.

The Boston Fed published research in September on the link between local economic despair and opioid use in New England. Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton suggested in their work on rising middle-age mortality among the white working class that the breakdown of traditional economic and social structures have probably contributed to a step up in overdose, alcoholism and suicide.

During her Senate testimony, Yellen explained that opioids were one cause of the drop in prime-age labor force participation, along with increasing automation and outsourcing by manufacturers. However, Yellen says she doesn’t understand whether widespread opioid abuse is a symptom of the “long running maladies” these workers have faced, or the cause.

“There seems to be a clear indication or a clear connection between this and the ability to go to a job,” said Senator Joe Donnelly, to which Yellen agreed.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse asked Yellen whether mid-career job retraining opportunities might alleviate the problem, as technological innovation forces Americans in certain industries to acquire new skills or be replaced by a machine.

“The individuals who’ve lost those jobs have found it difficult to acquire the skills necessary to re-enter the labor market and many individuals who don’t have the education are struggling to find jobs,” Yellen said, in response.

But while mid-career job retraining sounds plausible – it is a concrete, if wonkish, policy, there’s a broader problem with the labor force that narrowly applicable, resource-intensive “solutions” like these are missing. And that’s the fact that, fundamentally, the number of well-paying jobs available for everyone except the supremely well-educated is shrinking rapidly. Meanwhile, the financial circumstances for the average millennial are much more precarious. Indeed, failure to launch a career during the early years can leave a negative impact for years to come.

While it’s nice to think about, the “everybody should just learn to code” policy won’t fix any of these deeply entrenched problems in the US labor market – and it certainly won’t convince anyone to stop using drugs.
 

Drugs Are Killing More Americans Than Road Crashes

So much for the so-called "war on drugs"... The United States has been gripped by a heroin and opiate epidemic with user numbers recently hitting a 20 year high.

In 2014, the number of U.S. heroin users passed the million mark with deaths from overdoses rising steeply. And as Statista"s Niall McCarthy writes, drugs are now killing substantially more Americans every year than car crashes.

In 2004, 30,711 deaths were drug related compared to 42,836 in
motor vehicle accidents. A decade later, drug-induced deaths reached
49,714 while road crash deaths fell to 32,675.

You will find more statistics at Statista

As well as the cheap suppy of heroin, legistlation aimed at eliminating prescription opioid abuse has actually added to the problem. It involved changing the texture of the pills to make them more difficult to crush and inject into the bloodstream. That move made people shift over to heroin in droves. New and deadlier drugs such as Fentanyl are also adding to the overdose epidemic. 50 times more potent than heroin, Fentanyl has created an overdose spike in several north-eastern states and has been named as the drug that killed pop singer Prince earlier this year.