The FDA recently approved an opioid overdose antidote for over-the-counter use. CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains how to use it.
Month: September 2023
Death rates for people under 40 have skyrocketed
Blame fentanyl
A new Stateline analysis shows that U.S. residents under 40 were relatively unscathed by COVID-19 in the pandemic but fell victim to another killer: accidental drug overdose deaths.
Death rates in the age group were up by nearly a third in 2021 over 2018, and last year were still 21% higher.
COVID-19 was a small part of the increase, causing about 23,000 deaths total between 2018 and 2022 in the age group, which includes the millennial generation (born starting in the early 1980s), Generation Z (born starting in the late ’90s) and children. Vehicle accidents and suicide (about 96,000 each) and gun homicide (about 65,000) all took a cumulative toll from 2018 to 2022, according to a Stateline analysis of federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Overdose deaths, however, took almost 177,000 lives in that time.
Accidental overdose became the No. 1 cause of death in 13 states for people under 40, overtaking suicide in nine states and vehicle accidents in five others; it’s now the top cause in 37 states. The only other change was in Mississippi, where homicide became the main cause of death, overtaking car accidents. In 40 states and the District of Columbia, overdose was the biggest increase in deaths for young people.
Read the full article on the NC Newsline website.
Police Seize Enough Fentanyl to Kill Every Person 17 Times in NC Town
The extremely deadly opioid can kill in very small doses
Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, have confiscated enough fentanyl to kill 85% of the state’s population, and every member of their town multiple times over.
According to a report from Axios, police have seized 17 kilograms of fentanyl so far in 2023.
Fentanyl is a very deadly synthetic opioid. The Drug Enforcement Agency says that 2 milligrams of fentanyl, the equivalent of just a few grains of salt, is enough to potentially kill someone from an overdose. The seized amount is enough to kill 8.5 million people, 85% of the state’s population, or the entire 470,000 strong population of Raleigh more than 17 times over.
The highly deadly substance has found its way into much of the nation’s illicit drug supply, and helped fuel the record breaking number of overdose deaths America suffered in 2021 and 2022. Raleigh is also the home of North Carolina State University, with a massive student population of over 30,000 students.
Read the full article and watch the video on the Messenger website.