A newly released federal data have revealed that the number of heroin-related deaths has quadrupled in the U.S. since 2010.
The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that was released on Wednesday showed that drug poisoning deaths linked with heroin use has increased four times between 2010 and 2013. In the year 2000, the rate was only 0.7 percent deaths per 100,000 population but this has jumped to 2.7 deaths per 100,000 with the most drastic increase occurring between 2010 and 2013 when the rate of heroin overdose-related deaths jumped 37 percent.
More men were also more likely to die because of heroin overdose. In 2013, there were over 6,500 heroin-related deaths among men, significantly higher compared with the 1,700 heroin-related deaths in women.
The CDC report likewise said that while deaths from heroin overdose rose in all regions of the country, the Midwest has seen the biggest increase with the rate rising 11 times between 2000 and 2013. Heroin-related death quadrupled in the Northeast. The South saw a three-fold increase and the West doubled the heroin overdose death rate.
One of the reasons that could be attributed to the spike is the painkiller problem in the U.S. A report released by CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), showed that more people who are over 20 years old use opioids and the number of individuals who use painkillers that are stronger than morphine jumped from 17 percent to 37 percent in just about a decade.
Scott Krakower, from the Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York, said that some people who have become addicted to prescription pain killer have moved up to using heroin because besides being cheaper, it gave people a faster high. Krakower also added that doctors did not regulate prescription drugs and thus resulted in the current problems with heroin.
Non-hispanic blacks who are between 45 to 64 years had the highest incidence of drug poisoning deaths in 2000 at two per 100,000 populations. In 2013, however, the group with the highest rate was the non-Hispanic whites between 18 and 44 years old with incidence rate of seven per 100,000.
"Drug poisoning (overdose) is the number one cause of injury-related death in the United States, with 43,982 deaths occurring in 2013," the report reads. "While much attention has been given to deaths involving opioid analgesics in recent years there has been a steady increase in the number of drug-poisoning deaths involving heroin."
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