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Opioid epidemic 'getting worse instead of better,' public health officials warn
Michael Collins, USA TODAYPublished 2:52 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2017 | Updated 3:27 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2017
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/05/opioid-epidemic-getting-worse-instead-better-public-health-officials-warn/732192001/
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Michael Collins, USA TODAYPublished 2:52 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2017 | Updated 3:27 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2017
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/05/opioid-epidemic-getting-worse-instead-better-public-health-officials-warn/732192001/
WASHINGTON — A top public health official warned Thursday the nation’s opioid epidemic is showing no signs of abating.
“It is one of the few public health problems that is getting worse instead of better,” said Dr. Debra Houry, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
Houry and public health officials testifying at a Senate hearing described an addiction crisis that has spiraled so out of control that it is far beyond the scope of any particular agency to address.
“We need all hands on deck,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
Officials from four federal health agencies delivered their dire assessment of the opioid epidemic during the first in a series of hearings before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
“The opioid crisis is tearing our communities apart, tearing families apart, and posing an enormous challenge to health providers and law enforcement officials,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.
More than 11 million Americans misused prescription opioids in 2016, nearly 1 million used heroin, and 2.1 million had an opioid use disorder due to prescription opioids or heroin, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
More alarming, officials said, is the continued increase in overdose deaths, especially those involving illicitly made fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids.
More than 300,000 Americans have died of an opioid overdose since 2000, officials said. Preliminary data shows at least 64,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016, the highest number ever recorded in the United States in a single year.
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