A selective scourge: Inside the opioid epidemic
"They have America in a deadly grip. In 2015, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, 33,091 Americans died from opioid overdoses, according to the Centres for Disease Control—almost three times the number who perished in 2002. Nearly as many Americans were killed by opioids in 2015 as were killed by guns (36,132) or in car crashes (35,092). In the state of Maryland, which releases more timely figures, drug-overdose deaths were 62% higher in the first nine months of 2016 than a year earlier."
The Economist (5/11/17)