Opioid overdoses have killed so many Americans in recent years that experts say the epidemic is in its fourth wave. But the current wave of the opioid epidemic presents a new and particularly insidious threat: opioids, including the extremely potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, are increasingly being mixed with other drugs, whether the user knows it or not. As of 2019, more than 75% of drug overdose deaths involving cocaine now include an opioid, for example, as well as half of all deaths from stimulants like methamphetamine.
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When combined with other drugs, opioids are proving particularly deadly for Black Americans, finds a new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Overdose deaths that involved more than one substance increased dramatically between 2007 and 2019, but rose far more quickly among Black Americans than among whites. Among Black Americans, the number of deaths from opioids with cocaine during this time period rose 575%—up from 0.6 to 4.05 deaths per 100,000 people—while among white people, the death rate rose 184%, from 0.49 to 1.39 deaths per 100,000 people.
“People are increasingly dying of stimulants, cocaine, meth, and other stimulant drugs largely, but not entirely, driven by fentanyl contamination of stimulants,” says Tarlise Townsend, the study’s lead author and a researcher in the department of population health at New York University School of Medicine. “We’re now at this point where many experts advocate that people who use drugs assume fentanyl is in anything they’re using.”
Even the researchers were surprised by how dramatic the gap was, says Townsend. “What we found in this study was really, really alarming,” she says. “Not only are stimulant-opioid overdose deaths increasing very rapidly in this country, but they are disproportionately affecting people from marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and particularly Black Americans.” The divide seems to be growing even wider. During the…
Source : time
