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Syringe for a fentanyl injection (icon image)
Photo: David Maialetti / dpa
The number of drug-related deaths in the United States rose to a record high of more than 107,000 last year – the equivalent of one fatal overdose roughly every five minutes.
On Wednesday, the health authority CDC published preliminary data, according to which it assumes 107,622 drug-related deaths in the country with a good 330 million inhabitants in 2021.
This number increased by almost 15 percent compared to the previous year.
The drug epidemic in the USA has been fueled by opioids for years.
White House director of national drug control policy Rahul Gupta called the death toll "unacceptable."
Last November, the CDC announced that the US drug death mark had exceeded 100,000 for the first time in a 12-month period: from May 2020 to April 2021 inclusive, the agency had assumed 100,306 overdose deaths.
Many of these deaths began with a doctor's visit: More than 16,000 of 2020's victims died from doctor-prescribed opioids, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), more than at the peak of prescriptions in 2012.
At least since the judgment of 2007, it has been legally proven that America's big pharmaceutical companies are aggressively flooding the market with their opioids, advertising their products untruthfully and are therefore to blame for one of the country's biggest medical crises.
Oxycontin and fentanyl fuel the epidemic
Again and again there are criminal proceedings against the corporations in the USA, which can easily afford them because of their fabulous profits.
One example is the Sackler family.
This has become very rich, among other things, with the sale of the painkiller Oxycontin.
However, the drug also causes severe addiction and is considered one of the main causes of the drug epidemic.
Even after a billion dollar comparison in 2021, the Sacklers remain one of the wealthiest families in the United States.
The boundaries between prescription opioids and illegal drugs have long since dissolved.
Particularly dangerous is fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller which, in high doses, quickly leads to respiratory arrest.
Because it is now also mixed with heroin, cocaine or cannabis, many die from overdoses.
jok/dpa