I’ts an Overdose Epidemic not an Opioid Epidemic

Why there’s an overdose epidemic — in two graphs – STAT – By Hawre Jalal and Donald S. Burke – September 20, 2018

Here two of the authors write more about their recent study of the “Overdose Epidemic”:

The “overdose epidemic” that so many Americans are talking about isn’t really a single epidemic. It’s actually several of them, something we began exploring when we graphed the yearly counts of overdose deaths for the last 40 years.

It turns out that, when totaled, these sub-epidemics trace a nearly perfect exponential growth curve. For four decades, overdose deaths have been growing, doubling about every eight years.