In addition to deaths from COVID-19, addiction experts estimate 85,000 people will die in the coming years from a fatal cross-over between the virus and substance abuse disorders, leading to “deaths of despair” from suicide and overdose, an expert panel heard Monday.
The COVID-caused isolation and lack of access to health care and treatment could lead to tragic loss of life, Gary Mendell, founder and CEO of Shatterproof and national expert on the opioid crisis, told a webinar organized by the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation.
In the years prior to COVID-19, the U.S. was hit by a different public health crisis–widespread addiction to opioids and stimulants. It’s estimated that four million people suffer from opioid use disorder.
In addition, there has been a doubling of drug deaths between 2015 and 2018 from cocaine and methamphetamine.
People with substance use disorder (SUD) are put in particular risk by COVID-19, due to the respiratory damage caused by opioids and stimulants, and by social distancing measures that create barriers to treatment, according to a report released Monday by NIHCM, entitled, “Growing Challenges of Substance Use, Treatment & Recovery During COVID-19.”
“The agitated behavior of people using stimulants also places added burden on first responders already overwhelmed by the COVID-19 crisis,” the report said.
Stigma attached to opioid abuse made it hard for some people to seek out treatment even before the pandemic.
Among those with substance-abuse disorders, COVID-19 not only causes severe stress and anxiety but also prevents access to treatment and peer support groups and community services and increases isolation, said Dr. Carlos Blanco of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Opioid use disorder is correlated with greater rates of infectious disease, homelessness, and unemployment, all of these made much worse by the COVID-19 crisis.
As the number of opioid overdose deaths grew eight-fold between 2000 and 2018 – reaching 45,865 deaths in 2018 – the average minutes between deaths fell correspondingly, according to a report “The Evolution of the Opioid Crisis.”
By 2018 one person was dying of an opioid overdose every 11.5 minutes, said the report.
It is the interactions among the drugs that have worsened this public health crisis.
As the number of opioid overdose deaths soared from 17,268 to 45,865 over the 2008-2018 period, stimulants were increasingly involved in these deaths as well, according to the study
By 2018, 35 percent of opioid deaths also involved one or more stimulants (i.e., cocaine, methamphetamine or both substances), up from 15 percent (2,542) of the opioid deaths in 2008.
Throughout the period, cocaine was consistently more likely than methamphetamine to be involved in opioid overdoses.
However, the share of opioid deaths involving methamphetamine rose much more quickly over the decade. In 2008, only 2.5 percent of all opioid deaths had co-involvement of methamphetamine. A decade later, this share had grown to 13.6 percent, for a ten-year increase of more than 440 percent.
Stimulant overdose deaths are affecting different parts of the U.S. differently. In 2018, age-adjusted death rates involving cocaine were higher in Florida, all along the Atlantic coast into New England and westward into the East North Central census division.
Florida is a well-known portal for cocaine coming into the U.S. from the Caribbean and South America, and the East coast is a well-traveled trafficking corridor.
In contrast, methamphetamine death rates are higher in the Western U.S., corresponding to the supplies coming from Mexico, and spreading into the center of the country.
Expert comments, studies, and graphics can be accessed by going to the NIHCM site.
Nancy Bilyeau is deputy editor of The Crime Report
1 Comment
PLEASE stop showing pill bottles and pills. That is NOT what is driving overdose and addiction rates and possibly never was; it is illegal drugs not medical prescriptions. It is people shooting up illicit fentanyl, not cancer and rheumatology patients under supervision of a doctor. You are contributing to the further stigmatization and blame-casting upon patients struggling with agony from incurable diseases and unhealed injuries, who have been scapegoated enough already by the fed government and the DEA.
The media whipped the nation into a frenzy of opiophobia in the service of the mass-tort class action industry who were seeking Big Tobacco sized settlements, because Sinaloa cannot be sued. Parents looking to cast blame on doctors who alleviated their kids broken leg pain were unaware that their child was already misusing substances, and made a convenient scapegoat out of doctors who were ordered by the Joint Commission to increase prescribing, then raided by the DEA and had assets seized for following medical edicts. Yes there WERE pill mills primarily in Florida but those closed down years ago. Medical prescribing for legitimate pain is at an extreme low while overdose deaths have skyrocketed, clearly a failed policy that left addicts ignored and patients even in cancer treatment and hospice denied humane pain relief! PLEASE stop feeding the false narrative that made Human Rights Watch write a lengthy report on the wretched state of pain patients in the U.S. who are daily suffering and killing themselves to escape untreated pain. Pain is universal, and everyone is but one car accident or diagnosis from a life of unrelenting misery that they will find may go untreated in the U.S. in 2020. None of us want to see our boomer parents dying in hospice while in untreated pain. And none of us want to continue to see the overdose deaths from illegal street drugs, taking mostly young people in the prime of their lives. [this comment has been condensed for space]