New Scientist

Image: frankieleon

Overdoses from heroin and prescription painkillers such as oxycodone (OxyContin) have reached shocking proportions in the US. The problem has pushed up the death rate among young white adults to levels not seen since the end of the AIDS epidemic, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

The findings come from an analysis of nearly 60 million death certificates collected between 1990 and 2014. They show, among other things, that the 2014 overdose death rate among white Americans aged 25 to 34 was five times higher than the equivalent figure in 1999.

The graphs of the overdose data look like those of deaths from a new infectious disease, economist Jonathan Skinner at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice told the newspaper.

The problem is more or less confined to white Americans: there has been been no sharp rise in death rates in other groups in the US – death rates among black and Hispanic adults have declined since 1999 – or in the citizens of other rich countries. Read more on newscientist.com…