“Deaths from drug overdoses have jumped in nearly every county across the United States, driven largely by an explosion in addiction to prescription painkillers and heroin.
Some of the largest concentrations of overdose deaths were in Appalachia and the Southwest, according to new county-level estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The number of these deaths reached a new peak in 2014:47,055 people, or the equivalent of about 125 Americans every day.
The death rate from drug overdoses is climbing at a much faster pace than other causes of death, jumping to an average of 15 per 100,000 in 2014 from nine per 100,000 in 2003.”
Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/07/us/drug-overdose-deaths-in-the-us.html?_r=0
The CDC report on Drug Poisoning Mortality: United States, 2002–2014 released January 19th includes national, state, and county data and is available at: http://blogs.cdc.gov/nchs-data-visualization/drug-poisoning-mortality/
Source: NYTimes.com – January 19, 2016
