Fentanyl is now the deadliest drug in America, federal health officials announced, with more than 18,000 overdose deaths in 2016, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

It’s the first time the synthetic opioid has been the nation’s deadliest drug. From 2012 to 2015, heroin topped the list.

On average, in each year from 2013 to 2016, the rate of overdose deaths from Fentanyl increased by about 113 percent a year. The report said fentanyl was responsible for 29 percent of all overdose deaths in 2016, up from just 4 percent in 2011.

Overall, more than 63,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, according to the report, which was prepared by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s an average of 174 deaths a day.

The study also said many people who die from overdoses have multiple drugs in their system. “We’ve had a tendency to think of these drugs in isolation,” Dr. Holly Hedegaard, lead author of the report, told HuffPost. “It’s not really what’s happening.”

As an example, roughly 40 percent of people listed as dying of a cocaine overdose also had fentanyl in their system.

After fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine were the deadliest drugs in 2016. After declines earlier in the decade, the report said, overdose deaths from both cocaine and methamphetamine were starting to rise again.

The study said illegal drugs such as fentanyl and heroin were the primary causes of unintentional overdoses, while prescription drugs such as oxycodone tended to be used in suicide overdoses.

From USA Today by Doyle Rice, published 12/12/2018

Full article available at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/12/fentanyl-now-america-deadliest-drug-overtakes-heroin/2287343002/