(DailyDig.com) – When the narrative of the fentanyl epidemic is told, 2023 might be regarded as the year when Americans awoke to a menace ravaging their neighborhoods and a widening cultural rift over how to respond.
According to the CDC, the overdose fatality rate surpassed 112,000 in the 12-month course for the first time in 2023.
According to public health authorities, the bulk of drug fatalities are due to fentanyl, an opioid significantly more potent than heroin. However, the supply of illicit narcotics is becoming more complicated and dangerous, with an unpredictable combination that often consists of methamphetamines, fentanyl, and a rapidly shifting mix of new compounds.
Overdose deaths in the US exceeded 112,000 this year. According to drug policy authorities, the scope of this disaster now exceeds any prior drug pandemic, from the 1980s crack cocaine to the 2000s prescription opioid crisis. According to federal studies, drug overdoses are now the biggest cause of mortality among young Americans aged 18 to 45.
Xylazine and nitazenes, synthetic opioids that seem to be even stronger than fentanyl, are the most recent concerns. Mexican drug cartels often press these compounds into tablets and counterfeit them to resemble pharmaceutical-grade drugs for depression, ADHD, and pain.
Many drug policy authorities believe that attempts by Mexican drug cartels and Chinese chemical producers to decrease fentanyl manufacturing and smuggling have failed to reduce supply in US communities.
Stanford University professor Keith Humphreys, one of the nation’s foremost experts on drug addiction, issued an article in December 2023 saying that progressive remedies to the fentanyl epidemic had failed. Destigmatizing the use of drugs is a disastrous strategy that discourages individuals from seeking complete recovery, he said.
According to Ioan Grillo, a journalist living in Mexico City, the drug war has failed—there are more fatalities from drug overdoses than ever before.
Effective approaches to the overdose issue are bound to be time-consuming, expensive, and complicated, particularly if the drug supply on the streets continues to evolve with increasingly deadly substances.
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