Overdose Now Leads in Cause of Death, Proving Big Pharma's Opioids the Drug War's Winners

Drug overdoses kill more people under the age of 50 in the United States than anything else — more than vehicle crashes, homicide, gun-related incidents — anything.

Unsurprisingly, more of those overdoses pertained to opioids — legal, prescription medications, or illicit heroin, too frequently of dubious quality, sought by those for whom State-sanctioned painkillers no longer killed the pain — than to any other substance.

“To put the death toll into perspective,” Democracy Now! reports, “opioid deaths have now surpassed the peak in death by car crash in 1972, AIDS deaths in 1995 and gun deaths in 1993. After 20 years of heavy combat in South Vietnam, U.S. military casualties represented only one-third of the death toll from 10 years of opioid overdoses. Meanwhile, counties and states around the country have filed lawsuits to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for the public health crisis.”

Were it considered a contagious disease, the wildfire plague of opioid abuse and addiction would be pandemic.

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