CDC: Heroin deaths doubled in much of the country

In this Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2014 file photo, Peaches Geldof arrives to attend the ETAM’s ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris. Heroin is likely to have played a role in the death of the 25-year-old model and television personality. Detective Chief Inspector Paul Fotheringham of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate told an inquest into the death of the second daughter of Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof that a post-mortem examination was inconclusive, prompting further tests. In a 10-minute hearing, Fotheringham discussed her final days. “Recent use of heroin and the levels identified were likely to have played a role in her death,” he said. The news offers a sad echo of the death of her mother, television presenter Paula Yates, who died of a drug overdose in 2000 when Peaches Geldof was 11. In her final message on Twitter, she posted a photograph of herself as a toddler next to her mother along with the caption: “Me and my mum.” Peaches Geldof died at her home south of London on April 7. Inquests are held in Britain to determine the facts in sudden, violent or unexplained deaths. (AP Photo/C. d’Ettorre, file)

NEW YORK (AP) — Deaths from heroin overdose doubled in just two years in much of the nation, a new government study says.
The annual number of U.S. drug overdose deaths has been growing for more than 20 years. Officials have been most worried about a class of powerful prescription “opioid” painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. Deaths involving such painkillers continue to be much more common than heroin-related deaths, the study found.
But while those deaths are leveling off or declining in many parts of the country, heroin-related deaths soared between 2010 and 2012 in the 28 states for which information was available to the researchers.
Heroin overdose deaths rose from 1,779 to 3,665, doubling the death rate to 2.1 deaths per 100,000 people.
Heroin-related deaths increased in both men and women, in all age groups, and in whites, blacks and Hispanics.
Officials say the trend’s future is hard to predict. “It’s a volatile situation,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Len Paulozzi of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study looked at 2012 overdose death data from death certificates and compared it to 2010. The 28 states sampled include more than half of the U.S. population and account for more than half of the nation’s drug overdose deaths.
Overdose numbers from all the states are not expected to be released for at least a few more months.

Heroin Across America — In this August 1971 file photo, American troops who are addicted to heroin sit together at a U.S. Army amnesty center in Long Binh, Vietnam. Heroin’s reputation in the 1970s was “a really hard-core, dangerous street drug, a killer drug, but there’s a whole generation who didn’t grow up with that kind of experience with heroin,” said New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, whose office was created in 1971 in response to heroin use and related crime. “It’s been glamorized, certainly much more than it was during the ’70s.” (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich)

While the heroin death toll doubled, deaths linked to opioid painkillers fell in the 28 states, from 10,427 in 2010 to 9,869 in 2012. The death rate declined to 5.6 per 100,000.
Experts believe one reason heroin-related deaths increased may be because people who had been abusing the painkillers may have switched to heroin. Recent restrictions on prescribing opioid painkillers may be reducing illicit supplies of them at a time when the heroin supply has been increasing, CDC officials said.
“There is heroin around and people do try it,” said Dr. Hillary Kunins, assistant commissioner at the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
The heroin problem has been dramatic in New York City — a place where about two people die of fatal drug overdoses every day, on average.
Through the last decade, heroin-related deaths remained more common in New York than opioid painkiller-related deaths. In 2013, heroin overdose caused 6.2 deaths per 100,000 New Yorkers, the highest rate in a decade.
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Online:
CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

CDC: Heroin deaths doubled in much of the country

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