US opioid overdose epidemic getting worse: Report

Opioid overdoses were up 30 percent last year across the United States, according to a new report by the US government, underscoring that the drug abuse epidemic in the country is getting worse.

There were 142,000 visits to US hospital emergency departments due to opioid overdoses between July 2016 and September 2017, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Tuesday.

"This is really a fast-moving epidemic that's getting worse," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the CDC and acting administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

"The increases in overdoses were seen in adults of all age groups. They were seen in men and women. They were seen in every geographic region in the nation," she said.

"We really think that this is a wake-up call for all of us -- that the opioid epidemic is in all of our communities and that there's more that we need to do," Schuchat said.

Every day, more than 115 people in the US die after overdosing on any type of opioid, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said Tuesday that the country's opioid epidemic hits particularly close to home.

"My younger brother has struggled with addiction for decades, and I often think about the fact that it could have been me," he said. "My whole family, like many other families in America, have experienced a similar story and over the years have witnessed firsthand the pain that comes from opioid use disorder, which is commonly referred to as addiction."

PressTV-US opioid epidemic cost $1 trillion since 2001: Study

The US opioid has cost over $1 trillion since 2001, and may exceed another $500 billion over the next three years, according to a new study.

Overall, the new findings underscore just how serious the opioid epidemic has become, said Dr. Caleb Alexander, an associate professor and co-director of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

He said the trends described in the report are consistent with reports of worsening injuries and deaths.

Opioids are drugs formulated to replicate the pain reducing properties of opium. They include both legal painkillers like morphine, oxycodone, or hydrocodone prescribed by doctors for acute or chronic pain, as well as illegal drugs like heroin or illicitly made fentanyl.

US government and healthcare officials have been struggling to stem the epidemic of overdoses, which killed more than 64,000 Americans last year alone, up from 52,000 the previous year. More than half were related to opioids.

In November, US President Donald Trump declared the country's drug crisis a “public health emergency.” Trump also announced an advertising campaign to combat the epidemic, but did not direct any new federal funding toward the effort.

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