(Headline USA) More than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, setting another tragic record in the nation’s escalating overdose epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Wednesday.
The provisional 2021 total translates to roughly one U.S. overdose death every 5 minutes.
It marked a 15% increase from the previous record, set the year before. The CDC reviews death certificates and then makes an estimate to account for delayed and incomplete reporting.
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the latest numbers “truly staggering.”
U.S. overdose deaths have risen most years for more than two decades. The increase began in the 1990s with overdoses involving opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and—most recently—illicit fentanyl.
However, the problem has been exacerbated by the open-borders policies of the current Biden administration, which has enabled traffickers to slip past detection as Border Patrol agents get hamstrung with clerical duties of trying to process and care for asylum seekers.
Much of the opiate supply comes from China, which also has been emboldened during the Biden presidency to take a more hostile and confrontational approach, undermining US strength and sovereignty as it tests the bounds of diplomacy while pursuing an imperialist global expansion.
Last year, overdoses involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids surpassed 71,000, up 23% from the year before. There also was a 23% increase in deaths involving cocaine and a 34% increase in deaths involving meth and other stimulants.
Overdose deaths are often attributed to more than one drug. Some people take multiple drugs—and inexpensive fentanyl has been increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers’ knowledge, officials say.
“The net effect is that we have many more people, including those who use drugs occasionally, and even adolescents, exposed to these potent substances that can cause someone to overdose even with a relatively small exposure,” Volkow said in a statement.
Experts say the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the problem as Democrat-driven lockdowns and other restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get.
Overdose death trends are geographically uneven. Alaska saw a 75% increase in 2021—the largest jump of any state. In Hawaii, overdose deaths fell by 2%.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
