Drug Overdoses Killed More than 50,000 Americans in 2015

Drug overdose deaths continued their precipitous rise in 2015, totaling more than 50,000, according to data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2014, drug overdoses killed 47,000 people in the United States, setting a record then as well. Since 2000, around half a million Americans have died from drug overdoses.

Much of the increase in drug overdose deaths is due to a spike in the rate of opioid abuse, a trend that has increasingly disturbed public health officials over the past decade.

“The increasing number of deaths from opioid overdose is alarming,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden in 2015. “The opioid epidemic is devastating American families and communities.”

These trends have only worsened.

Last year alone, nearly 13,000 people died from overdosing on heroin, surpassing for the first time the number of deaths due to firearm homicides. Opioid deaths, which not only include heroin but also prescription painkillers and fetanyl, have dramatically increased in recent years.

Deaths due to synthetic opioids, such as fetanyl, spiked 73 percent, claiming 9,580 lives. Prescription painkiller overdoses killed 17,536.

"I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this. Certainly not in modern times,” said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the CDC.

Photo credit: Frankieleon via Flickr