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- Jun 27, 2011
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Tom Frieden, M.D. is the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One of the most heartbreaking problems I’ve faced as CDC director is our nation’s opioid crisis. Lives, families, and communities continue to be devastated by this complex and evolving epidemic.
Year after year since I’ve been at CDC, the drug overdose death toll in our nation has been the highest on record. In 2015, more than 52,000 Americans lost their lives from an overdose. More than 33,000 of these deaths involved a prescription or illicit opioid.
This crisis was caused, in large part, by decades of prescribing too many opioids for too many conditions where they provide minimal benefit and is now made worse by wide availability of cheap, potent, and easily available illegal opioids: heroin, illicitly made fentanyl, and other, newer illicit synthetic opioids. These deadly drugs have found a ready market in people primed for addiction by misuse of prescription opioids.
Overdose deaths involving heroin have more than quadrupled since 2010. And what was a slow stream of illicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, is now a flood, with the amount of the powerful drug seized by law enforcement increasing dramatically. America is awash in opioids; urgent action is critical.
EXCLUSIVE: CDC Chief Frieden: How to end America's growing opioid epidemic