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More than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States in 2020, nearly 30% more than the previous year and the highest annual number ever recorded, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This is the “highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period, and the largest increase since at least 1999,” National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Nora Volkow said in a statement.
These numbers are due in large part to the radical lockdowns established by the government, an article by the Foundation for Economic Education already warned about this reality in April of this year: “although drug overdose deaths had begun to rise in the months leading up to the pandemic, the largest spike in deaths occurred between April and May 2020, when the lockdowns were tightened.”
According to official data, most of the drug overdose deaths were due to the “inappropriate use” of opioids, which are highly addictive.
In fact, authorities estimate that in the last two decades this crisis has killed nearly half a million people in the United States.
In total, opioid overdose deaths increased in the country from 50,963 in 2019 to 69,710 in 2020.
Fentanyl, a synthetic drug 100 times more potent than morphine, the same drug allegedly in George Floyd’s body at the time of his death, is responsible for the majority of deaths.
The more than 50,000 opiate deaths represent a 100% increase over the figures of a decade ago, in what is described as a true “crisis” in the World Drug Report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
In addition to fentanyl, overdose deaths also occurred among users of psychostimulants, cocaine, and natural and semi-synthetic opioids, such as prescription painkillers, according to CDC data.
