The drug overdose epidemic

In 2021 — the most recent year for which complete statistics are available — approximately 107,622 Americans died from drug overdoses. (This is up from about 17,000 twenty years earlier.)

71,000 of these deaths were caused by synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl. Heroin accounted for another 10,000. 16,000 were caused by prescription opioids.

Here are the total percentage of all deaths caused by drug overdoses, by age group (Note that there are almost no drug overdose deaths among children 14 and younger, and very few among people 65 and older):

Age 15-24: 20% of all deaths

Age 25-34: 30% of all deaths

Age 35-44: 22% of all deaths

Age 45-54: 10% of all deaths

Age 55-64: 4% of all deaths

As I’ve noted before, all-cause mortality rates among 25-34 year olds are now higher than they’ve been at any point in the last 75 years. By far the biggest factor in that amazing statistic is the explosion in fatal drug overdoses, which in turn is overwhelmingly a product of opioids.

A really fascinating book on this subject is Sam Quinones’s Dreamland, which chronicles among other things how black tar heroin was imported into small towns and suburbs all across America from one small impoverished town in the Mexican state of Nayarit. Quinones describes a remarkably innovative and entrepreneurial operation, which models itself quite consciously as a consumer-friendly business, that goes to great lengths to avoid violence, at least as that term is usually understood. (“Blood is a big expense” as the Turk noted).