February 28, 2022

Jennifer Scholl

Drug use in the US can be dangerous and often lethal. The Opioid Epidemic continues to be devastating to the country, and the number of substance-related deaths continues to rise country-wide whether they be opioids or not.

Opioids are not the only lethal drugs but are leading the death toll. The CDC, or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, claims opioids take 130 American lives per day and that nearly 841,000 people have died from drug overdose since 1999. Among those drug-related deaths, over 70% in 2019 involved opioids.

Among the communities affected by these harmful substances are the American Indian communities. American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) communities have higher overdose death rates than the national average. The CDC and other organizations are working hard to combat a problem that seems to plague native tribes and communities more than the rest of the country. According to the CDC, American Indian and Alaskan Native populations had the second-highest overdose rates from any type of opioids in 2017 at 15.7 deaths per 100,000 people.

The national rate of all drug overdose deaths in the US has increased by 24.4% from 2014 to 2016. This percent change is a significant increase in just two years. However, the percent increase in the rate of national opioid deaths is almost double that of all drug overdose deaths at 47.7% from 2014 to 2016. The opioid epidemic continues to spread and addiction plagues more and more people every year. In 2014, the American Indian and Alaskan Native opioid death rate was 11.8 per 100,000 people while the national average was just 9.

By 2016, the national opioid death rate rose to 13.3 per 100,000 people, and the Indigenous community rate rose to 13.7. The national opioid death rate’s percent increase is a devastating number, and the Indigenous community continues to suffer but had a lower percent increase at 16.1%. Despite this smaller percent increase, these Indigenous communities continue to have a higher death rate than the national average.

The 2014 national rate of all drug overdoses in the US per 100,000 people was 15.8. In 2016 this rate rose 24.4% to 19.7 per 100,000 people. In 2016, the highest rate per state was West Virginia at 48 people per 100,000 and the lowest was Nebraska at just 6.2 people per 100,000. Despite the US average trend increasing, some states like Nebraska actually decreased. Their rate for 2014 was 6.6 per 100,000 people.

Drug use in America can be devastating to communities and families that fall victim. The CDC and other organizations like the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) are working hard to address the opioid crisis and provide aid to people affected by addiction. After digging deeper the ongoing drug crisis should not be downplayed. The numbers are in and with death rates increasing the issue continues to need to be addressed.*

Sources:

CDC - Overdose Death Rates Involving Opioids, by Type, United States, 1999-2016:

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/OD-deaths-2019.html 

CDC - Opioid Overdose Prevention in Tribal Communities: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/budget/opioidoverdosepolicy/TribalCommunities.html 

CDC - Drug Overdose Epidemic: Behind the Numbers:

https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/data/index.html   

CDC - Opioids:

https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/data/analysis-resources.html  

*This article was written for my Data in Journalism class. I aggregated the data and analyzed it using Microsoft Excel and various sources as well as made the charts shown.