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Deadly US Heroin Overdoses Quadruple

Deadly US Heroin Overdoses Quadruple
Deadly US Heroin Overdoses Quadruple

The number of deadly heroin overdoses in the United States more than quadrupled from 2010 to 2015 as the price of the drug dropped and its potency increased. There were 12,989 overdose deaths involving heroin in 2015, said the Atlanta-based National Center for Health Statistics on Friday, compared with 3,036 such fatalities five years earlier. In 2010, heroin was involved in 8% of US drug overdose deaths. By 2015, that proportion had jumped to 25%. A 2015 study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the declining price of heroin and its increasing purity might be causing more people to use it, Reuters reported. Due to its falling price, heroin can cost as little as one-tenth that of prescription pills, Rich Hamburg, executive vice president of the non-profit group, Trust for America’s Health, said on Thursday.”You are 40 times more likely to use heroin if you started with opioid painkillers. Heroin is part of America’s larger drug abuse problem.”

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